You are on page 1of 479

Values, Religion, and Culture in Adolescent

Development

Cultural values and religious beliefs play a substantial role in adolescent


development. Developmental scientists have shown increasing interest
in how culture and religion are involved in the processes through which
adolescents adapt to environments. This volume constitutes a timely and
unique addition to the literature on human development from a cultural-
contextual perspective. Editors Gisela Trommsdorff and Xinyin Chen
present systematic and in-depth discussions of theoretical perspectives,
landmark studies, and strategies for further research in the field. The
eminent contributors reflect diverse cultural perspectives, transcend-
ing the Western emphasis of many previous works. This volume will be
attractive to scholars and professionals interested in basic developmental
processes, adolescent social psychology, and the sociological and psycho-
logical dimensions of religion.

Gisela Trommsdorff is Professor Emeritus for Developmental and Cross-


Cultural Psychology at University of Konstanz. She is Research Professor
at DIW/GSOEP, Berlin, and President of the German-Japanese Society
for Social Sciences. Her main research interests are in intergenerational
relations and children’s socioemotional development in cultural contexts,
including Asia, the United States, and Europe. She has published numer-
ous book chapters and articles in international journals and is coeditor
of several books. She has served on several editorial and advisory boards.
She is a member of the Academy of Sciences in Erfurt and recipient of the
German Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class.

Xinyin Chen is Professor of Psychology at University of Pennsylvania. He


is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association
for Psychological Science and President-elect of the International Society
for the Study of Behavioral Development. He is the recipient of a William
T. Grant Scholars Award, a Shanghai Eastern Scholars Award, and several
other academic awards for his scientific work. His primary research inter-
ests are in children’s and adolescents’ socioemotional functioning from
a contextual-developmental perspective. He has published a number of
book chapters and articles in major journals such as Child Development
and Developmental Psychology.
The Jacobs Foundation Series on Adolescence

Series Editors
Jürgen Baumert
Marta Tienda

The Jacobs Foundation Series on Adolescence presents state-of-the-art


research about the myriad factors that contribute to the welfare, social pro-
ductivity, and social inclusion of current and future generations of young
people. Sponsored by the Swiss Jacobs Foundation, the series offers read-
ers cutting-edge applied research about successful youth development,
including circumstances that enhance their employability, their respect
for and integration with nature and culture, and their future challenges
triggered by global economic and technological changes. Contributing
authors are internationally known scholars from a variety of disciplines,
including developmental and social psychology, clinical psychology, edu-
cation, economics, communication, sociology, and family studies.

Ann S. Masten, Karmela Liebkind, and Donald J. Hernandez, eds.,


Realizing the Potential of Immigrant Youth
Ingrid Schoon and Rainer K. Silbereisen, eds., Transitions from School to
Work: Globalization, Individualization, and Patterns of Diversity
Alison Clarke-Stewart and Judy Dunn, eds., Families Count: Effects on
Child and Adolescent Development
Michael Rutter and Marta Tienda, eds., Ethnicity and Causal Mechanisms
P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Kathleen Kiernan, and Ruth J. Friedman,
eds., Human Development across Lives and Generations: The Potential
for Change
Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont et al., eds., Joining Society: Social Interaction
and Learning in Adolescence and Youth
Marta Tienda and William Julius Wilson, eds., Youth in Cities: A Cross-
National Perspective
Roland Vandenberghe and A. Michael Huberman, eds., Understanding
and Preventing Teacher Burnout: A Sourcebook of International Research
and Practice
Ruby Takanishi and David A. Hamburg, eds., Preparing Adolescents for the
Twenty-First Century: Challenges Facing Europe and the United States
Albert Bandura, ed., Self-Efficacy in Changing Societies
Michael Rutter, ed., Psychosocial Disturbances in Young People: Challenges
for Prevention
Anne C. Petersen and Jeylan T. Mortimer, eds., Youth Unemployment
and Society
Gisela Trommsdorff and Xinyin Chen, eds., Values, Religion, and
Culture in Adolescent Development
V alues, Religion, and
Culture in Adolescent
Development

Edited by
Gisela Trommsdorff
University of Konstanz

Xinyin Chen
University of Pennsylvania
cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,
Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City

Cambridge University Press


32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107014251

© Cambridge University Press 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception


and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data


  Values, religion, and culture in adolescent development / [edited by]
  Gisela Trommsdorff, Xinyin Chen.
   p.  cm. – (The Jacobs Foundation series on adolescence)
  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  ISBN 978-1-107-01425-1
  1.  Adolescent psychology.  2.  Values,  3.  Religion and culture.
  I.  Trommsdorff, Gisela.  II.  Chen, Xinyin.
  BF724.V35  2013
  155.5′1825–dc23    2012006487

ISBN 978-1-107-01425-1 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs
for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not
guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
In Memoriam of Professor Fred Rothbaum

Professor Fred Rothbaum (1949–2011) was an innovative scholar,


­dedicated researcher, and a kind human being whose legacy will continue
to guide developmental psychology researchers around the world.
Contents

List of Contributors page xiii


Preface xxv
Acknowledgments xxix

Part One  Theoretical Perspectives on Values, Religion, and


Adolescent Development in Cultural Context
1 Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion in Adolescent
Development: A Conceptual Overview and Synthesis 3
Gisela Trommsdorff
2 Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth – A Historical
and Cultural Perspective 46
Hans-Joachim Kornadt
3 Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness in Adolescence
Pathways to Spiritual Awareness 66
Fred Rothbaum, Yan Z. Wang, and Dov Cohen

Part Two  Universal and Culture-Specific Functions of Adolescent


Values and Religion
4 Values and Religion in Adolescent Development: Cross-
National and Comparative Evidence 97
Shalom H. Schwartz
5 Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons around the
World: Personal Values and Societal Context 123
Michael Harris Bond, Vivian Miu-Chi Lun,
and Liman Man Wai Li

ix
x Contents

6 Indonesian Muslim Adolescents and the Ecology of Religion 146


Doran C. French, Nancy Eisenberg, Urip Purwono, and
Julie A. Sallquist
7 Peer Groups as a Crucible of Positive Value Development
in a Global World 164
Reed W. Larson, Lene Arnett Jensen, Hyeyoung Kang, Aisha
Griffith, and Vikki Rompala
8 Civic Development in Relational Perspective 188
Kenneth H. Rubin, Tina Malti, and Kristina McDonald

Part Three  Impact of Values and Religion on Adolescent


Adjustment in Times of Social Change
9 Marginalized Japanese Youth in Post-industrial Japan:
Motivational Patterns, Self-Perceptions, and the Structural
Foundations of Shifting Values 211
Vinai Norasakkunkit and Yukiko Uchida
10 Adolescent Cultural Values and Adjustment in the Changing
Chinese Society 235
Xinyin Chen, Li Wang, and Junsheng Liu
11 With God’s Help: The Future Orientation of Palestinian Girls
in Israel Growing Up Muslim 253
Rachel Seginer and Sami Mahajna
12 Religion’s Role in the Development of Girls’ Occupational
Aspirations 271
Lisa D. Pearce and Jessica Halliday Hardie
13 First Romantic Relationships of Adolescents from Different
Religious Groups in Israel and Germany 290
Bernhard Nauck and Anja Steinbach

Part Four  Socialization Processes of Values and Religion in


Adolescent Development
14 Attachment and Religious Development in Adolescence: The
Implications of Culture 315
Pehr Granqvist
15 Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Adolescents’ Religiosity and
Family Orientation 341
Boris Mayer and Gisela Trommsdorff
Contents xi

16 Religion and the Intergenerational Continuity of Values 370


Ariel Knafo, Ella Daniel, Sigal Gabay, Ran Zilber, and Rivka Shir
17 Adolescents’ Social Development and the Role of Religion:
Coherence at the Detriment of Openness 391
Vassilis Saroglou
18 Hindu Religious Values and Their Influence on
Youths in India 424
Ramesh Chandra Mishra

Index 443
Contributors

Michael Harris Bond, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China


Michael Harris Bond was born in Canada and educated at the University
of Toronto. He received his PhD from Stanford University and postdoc-
toral at Michigan State University. Bond worked in Japan for three years
at Kwansei Gakuin University, developing his skills in doing cross-cultural
psychology. Thereafter, he was employed by the Chinese University of Hong
Kong, remaining there and practicing social psychology for 35 years, try-
ing to figure out the psychology of the Chinese people. Michael is currently
chair professor of psychology in the Department of Applied Social Sciences,
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and looks forward to further intellec-
tual adventures.
Xinyin Chen, University of Pennsylvania, United States
Xinyin Chen is professor of psychology at University of Pennsylvania. He
is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association
for Psychological Science and president-elect of the International Society
for the Study of Behavioral Development. He is the recipient of a William
T. Grant Scholars Award, a Shanghai Eastern Scholars Award, and several
other academic awards for his scientific work. His primary research inter-
ests are in children’s and adolescents’ socioemotional functioning from a
contextual-developmental perspective. He has published a number of book
chapters and articles in major journals such as Child Development and
Developmental Psychology.
Dov Cohen, University of Illinois, United States
Dov Cohen has been on faculty at University of Waterloo (Canada) and
University of Illinois, where he is currently a professor of psychology. He is

xiii
xiv Contributors

the coauthor of Culture of Honor and coeditor of the Handbook of Cultural


Psychology and Culture and Social Behavior.
Ella Daniel, University of Toronto, Canada
Ella Daniel is currently a postdoctoral Fellow in the Psychology Department
at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on understanding the
development of values and identity in adolescence, using approaches from
developmental, social, and cross-cultural psychology. Her doctoral disser-
tation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem focused on the contextualiza-
tion of values in relation to developmental stage and migration. She holds a
BA in psychology from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and an
MA in social psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Nancy Eisenberg, Arizona State University, United States
Nancy Eisenberg is regents’ professor at Arizona State University. She has
published numerous books, chapters, and articles on socioemotional and
moral development and is the editor of volume 3 of the Handbook of Child
Psychology. She is currently the founding editor of the new Society for
Research in Child Development journal, Child Development Perspectives,
and is past editor of Psychological Bulletin. She is the 2007 recipient of the
Ernest R. Hilgard Award for a Career Contribution to General Psychology,
Division 1, American Psychological Association; the 2008 recipient of the
International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development Distinguished
Scientific Contribution Award; the 2009 recipient of the G. Stanley Hall
Award Recipient Award for Distinguished Contribution to Developmental
Psychology, Division 7, American Psychological Association; and the 2011
William James Fellow Career Contribution Award from the Association for
Psychological Science.
Doran C. French, Purdue University, United States
Doran C. French is professor and department head of the Department of
Human Development and Family Studies at Purdue University. He has pub-
lished articles and chapters on various aspects of child and adolescent peer
relationships, including social status, aggression, friendship, and school adjust-
ment. His work on cultural psychology has included research in Indonesia,
China, and South Korea. He has recently focused on understanding Islam
and the social competence and adjustment of Indonesian adolescents.
Sigal Gabay, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Sigal Gabay is currently an MA student on the clinical psychology track,
Psychology Department, Tel Aviv University, Israel. She holds a BA in psy-
chology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Contributors xv

Pehr Granqvist, Stockholm University, Sweden


Pehr Granqvist got his PhD from Uppsala University in 2002. He is cur-
rently associate professor in psychology and head of the PhD program in
the Psychology Department, Stockholm University. His research has applied
attachment theory to religion over the lifespan, including adolescent stud-
ies. He is the recipient of two international awards for this research, from
the American Psychological Association and the International Association
for the Psychology of Religion.
Aisha Griffith, University of Illinois, United States
Aisha Griffith is a doctoral student at University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include youth programs for
adolescents and the adults who work at these programs.
Jessica Halliday Hardie, Pennsylvania State University, United States
Jessica Halliday Hardie is a NICHD postdoctoral Fellow in Family
Demography and Individual Development at Pennsylvania State University.
She is interested in how economic and social resources shape pathways
through the transition to adulthood, and how this differs by social class,
race/ethnicity, and gender. She employs a mixed-methods strategy in order
to speak to both the social processes fueling inequality and the size of the
population affected.
Lene Arnett Jensen, Clark University, United States
Lene Arnett Jensen is associate professor of psychology and director of
the Developmental Psychology Program at Clark University. Dr. Jensen’s
research addresses cultural identity development in the contexts of migra-
tion and global change, immigrants’ civic engagement, and how moral
reasoning and behavior are culturally and developmentally situated. Her
publications include Immigrant Civic Engagement: New Translations (2008,
with C. A. Flanagan) and Bridging Cultural and Developmental Psychology:
New Syntheses for Theory, Research and Policy (2012). Dr. Jensen is editor-in-
chief of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (with Reed
Larson), on the editorial board of Monographs of the Society for Research
in Child Development, and the conference chair of the 2012 Biennial
Conference of the Society for Research on Adolescence.
Hyeyoung Kang, Binghamton University, United States
Hyeyoung Kang is an assistant professor of human development at
Binghamton University, State University of New York. Her research inter-
ests include youth development in diverse contexts, immigrant families and
youth, and parent–adolescent relationships.
xvi Contributors

Ariel Knafo, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel


Ariel Knafo is associate professor of psychology at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. His research focuses on understanding social development using
approaches from developmental, social, and cross-cultural psychology, as
well as behavior genetics. His current projects involve understanding how
value priorities in adolescence develop and the genetic and environmen-
tal contributions to prosociality. He earned his PhD in psychology at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem before postdoctoral fellowships in educa-
tional psychology at Ben Gurion University and in behavior genetics at the
Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London.

Hans-Joachim Kornadt, University of the Saarland, Germany


Hans-Joachim Kornadt is professor emeritus of educational psychology
at the University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken, Germany. He conducted
research in Africa and East and South-East Asia and holds several guest
professorships in Japan and Indonesia. He was a member of the German
National Science Advisory Council, president of the German Psychological
Association, and president of the Japanese-German Society for Social
Sciences. His research interests include pro- and antisocial motives and
socialization in a cross-cultural perspective, and psychological aspects of
changes in university and higher education. He has numerous publica-
tions about socialization and personality development in different cultures,
aggression, and education.

Reed W. Larson, University of Illinois, United States


Reed W. Larson is a professor in the Departments of Human and Community
Development, Psychology, and Educational Psychology at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the daily devel-
opmental experience of adolescents, particularly in the context of youth
development programs and families. He is the author of Divergent Realities:
The Emotional Lives of Mothers, Fathers, and Adolescents (with Maryse
Richards) and Being Adolescent: Conflict and Growth in the Teenage Years
(with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). He was recently the chair of the Study
Group on Adolescence in the 21st Century, is the editor-in-chief of New
Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (with Lene Jensen), and
was recently the president of the Society for Research on Adolescence.

Liman Man Wai Li, University of Alberta, Canada


Liman Man Wai Li was born in Hong Kong and received her master’s degree
at the Chinese University. She is now a graduate student in the Psychology
Department at the University of Alberta, interested in examining how
Contributors xvii

cultural/environmental factors interact with individuals’ characteristics in


predicting individuals’ psychological and behavior tendencies.
Junsheng Liu, Shanghai Normal University, China
Junsheng Liu is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at
Shanghai Normal University. He was a visiting scholar at the University of
Western Ontario, Canada, and the University of Pennsylvania in 2010 and
2011. Dr. Liu has received a Pujiang Scholars Award, a Chenguang Scholars
Award, and several other academic awards. His research focuses on chil-
dren’s and adolescents’ social development. He is particularly interested in
children’s experiences within the peer group. He has conducted several lon-
gitudinal projects in China with his international colleagues.
Vivian Miu-Chi Lun, Lingnan University, China
Vivian Miu-Chi Lun was born in Hong Kong and received her education
there up to earning her MPhil at the Chinese University. She then under-
took her PhD study at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand,
where she had much intercultural experience and started thinking of herself
as a global citizen. After finishing her PhD, she worked as a part-time lec-
turer and then later a postdoctoral researcher at the City University of Hong
Kong. She is currently working as an assistant professor in the Department
of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University, with a goal of exploring
further in psychological research.
Sami Mahajna, Beit Berl College, Israel
Sami Mahajna received his PhD in Education and Human Development
from the University of Haifa, Israel, in 2007. His dissertation (supervised by
Prof. Rachel Seginer) examined the meaning of future orientation for Arab
girls in Israel. With a grant he recently received from the Jacobs Foundation,
Dr. Mahajna continues his research on adolescent future orientation and
examines the developmental aspects of future orientation among Arab girls
and boys in Israel. At present he is the chairperson of the Early Childhood
program at the Academic Arab Institute for Teacher Education, Beit Berl
College, Israel.
Tina Malti, University of Toronto, Canada
Tina Malti, PhD (2003, Developmental Psychology, Max Planck Institute for
Human Development and Free University Berlin), is an assistant professor
in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. Her research
interests are children’s and adolescents’ moral and social-emotional devel-
opment, mental health, and developmental intervention to promote social
responsibility and well-being.
xviii Contributors

Boris Mayer, University of Konstanz, Germany


Boris Mayer grew up in southern Germany and received his education in
psychology at the University of Konstanz. During his doctoral studies he
taught developmental psychology at the same university. His long-standing
interest in culture and human development deepened during a research
internship in South Korea when he was confronted with a completely dif-
ferent social reality and language. Currently he is a postdoctoral researcher
and lecturer of cross-cultural psychology and psychological research meth-
ods at the University of Konstanz. His research interests are in adolescent
development across cultures as well as in cultural change and globaliza-
tion. He coedited the book Psychologie – Kultur – Gesellschaft [Psychology –
Culture  – Society] and has coauthored several empirical journal articles,
published in, among others, the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Kristina McDonald, University of Alabama, United States


Kristina McDonald received her PhD in developmental psychology from
Duke University. She is a research associate at the University of Alabama.
Her research interests include peer relationships and social-cognitive pro-
cesses underlying problematic social behaviors, like aggression.

Ramesh Chandra Mishra, Banaras Hindu University, India


Ramesh Chandra Mishra is professor of psychology at Banaras Hindu
University. A D.Phil. from Allahabad University, he has been postdoc-
toral research Fellow, Shastri research Fellow, and visiting professor at
Queen’s University, Canada. He has also been a Fellow-in-residence of
the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and
Social Sciences (NIAS), the Netherlands, and a visiting professor at the
University of Geneva and Jean Piaget Archives, Switzerland. His principal
interest is in cultural influence on human development, and he has con-
tributed numerous research papers and chapters to professional journals
and books, both in India and abroad, in the fields of cognition, accultur-
ation, schooling, and cross-cultural studies. He is the coauthor of Ecology,
Acculturation and Psychological Adaptation: A Study of Adivasis in Bihar
(with J. W. Berry and D. Sinha) and Eco-Cultural Pathways to Geocentric
Language and Cognition (with P. Dasen) and coeditor (with J. W. Berry and
R. C. Tripathi) of Psychology in Human and Social Development: Lessons
from Diverse Cultures.

Bernhard Nauck, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany


Bernhard Nauck has been the founding chair of sociology at the Chemnitz
University of Technology, Germany, since 1992. He received a PhD in 1977
(University of Cologne) and Habilitation in 1983 and 1987 (University of
Contributors xix

Bonn and Augsburg). He has been president of the sections for Sociology of
Family and Youth and for Migration and Ethnic Minorities in the German
Sociological Association and of the Committee on Family Research (RC06)
in the International Sociological Association. He is currently the pres-
ident of the executive committee of GESIS, the German Social Science
Infrastructure Services, and P.I. and speaker of PAIRFAM, the German
Family Panel. His research interests include family, lifespan, intergenera-
tional relationships, demography, migration, and interethnic relations with
an emphasis on cross-cultural comparisons.
Vinai Norasakkunkit, Minnesota State University, United States
Vinai Norasakkunkit received his PhD from University of Massachusetts,
Boston, and is associate professor of psychology at Minnesota State
University, Mankato. His research interests are in the intersection of
­cultural psychology and clinical psychology, as well as the psychological
consequences of globalization.
Lisa D. Pearce, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States
Lisa D. Pearce is associate professor of sociology and Carolina popula-
tion center research Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. Her research focuses on religion’s influence on well-being and family
attitudes and behavior in adolescence and young adulthood. She studies
these processes in the United States and Nepal using both quantitative and
qualitative data. Pearce recently published the book A Faith of Their Own:
Stability and Change in the Religiosity of American Adolescents with Melinda
Lundquist Denton (2011).
Urip Purwono, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia
Urip Purwono received his Drs. in Psychology (Clinical) from Universitas
Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia; MS (Education) from Indiana University,
Bloomington, Indiana; and MSc and PhD in psychology from the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst. His methodological research interests include
test theory, test construction, test adaptation, and structural equation mod-
eling. His research also focuses on youth’s achievement, values, and religios-
ity as they are related to the individual’s well-being. In addition, he develops
educational tests that are widely used in Indonesia.
Vikki Rompala, La Rabida Children’s Hospital, Chicago, United States
Vikki Rompala is a licensed clinical social worker. Her clinical, research, and
policy experience in child welfare, youth development, and school-based
outpatient clinics, hospitals, and in-home services has provides a wider per-
spective of the overlaps among systems and provides a voice for families
and children who are often disenfranchised within these systems.
xx Contributors

Fred Rothbaum, Tufts University, United States


Fred Rothbaum was professor and director of graduate studies in the
Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University. He
published widely on socialization and cultural processes as they relate to
children’s perceived control, behavior problems, attachment, and emotion
regulation. Dr. Rothbaum also cofounded the Child and Family WebGuide,
a Web portal providing research to parents, professionals, and students.
Kenneth H. Rubin, University of Maryland, United States
Kenneth H. Rubin is professor of human development and director of
the Center for Children, Relationships, and Culture at the University of
Maryland. He received his BA from McGill University (1968) and his MS
(1969) and PhD (1971) from the Pennsylvania State University. Ken Rubin
is a Fellow of the Canadian and American Psychological Associations
and the Association of Psychological Science. In 2008, Rubin received
the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development Award
for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of
Research and Theory in Behavioral Development, and in 2010 he was
awarded the Mentoring Award in Developmental Psychology by the
American Psychological Association. He has twice served as associate edi-
tor of Child Development (1981–1984; 1998–2002) and is currently on sev-
eral editorial boards. Rubin was president of the International Society for
the Study of Behavioral Development from 1998 to 2002; he is currently
a member of the Governing Council of the Society for Research in Child
Development. During his career, Rubin has published twenty books  –
including The Friendship Factor, which won the Gold Award, National
Parenting Publications Awards – and more than 300 peer-reviewed chap-
ters and journal manuscripts on such topics as social competence, social
cognition, play, aggression, social withdrawal/behavioral inhibition/shy-
ness, parenting, and children’s peer and family relationships. More recently,
as director of the International Consortium on the Study of Children,
Relationships, and Culture (research sites include Argentina, Australia,
Brazil, Canada, China, India, Italy, Korea, Oman, Portugal, and the United
States), he and his colleagues have been studying the aforementioned topics
from cultural and cross-cultural perspectives. Rubin is currently principal
investigator on a project funded by the National Institute of Mental Health
entitled “A Multi-Method Early Intervention Program for Socially Reticent,
Inhibited Preschoolers” and Co–Principal Investigator on a project funded
by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development entitled
“Social Outcomes in Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury.”
Contributors xxi

Julie A. Sallquist, Arizona State University, United States


Julie A. Sallquist graduated with her PhD in psychology in the area of
developmental psychology from Arizona State University in 2009 and is an
assistant research professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics
at Arizona State University. Dr. Sallquist’s research interests include the
socioemotional and cognitive development of young children, the social-
ization of emotion, and children’s peer interactions, with an emphasis on
positive affect and adjustment. She also has an interest in cross-cultural
research and has been involved in research studies examining Indonesian
adolescents’ and Ugandan children’s socioemotional functioning.
Vassilis Saroglou, University of Louvain, Belgium
Vassilis Saroglou holds a PhD in psychology (University of Louvain) and has
studied psychology (MA), religious sciences (MA), and philosophy (BS). He
is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Louvain
(Belgium) and has been a Fulbright scholar at William and Mary (Virginia),
adjunct professor at Arizona State University, and visiting professor at the
University of Lille (France). His research has covered many issues in per-
sonality, social, cultural, and developmental psychology of religion and led
to more than 80 scientific publications. For his research, he received the
Early Career Award of the American Psychological Association–Division
36 and the Quinquennial Godin Prize of the International Association for
the Psychology of Religion. He currently serves on the editorial boards of
the major journals of the field, as an associate editor of the International
Journal for the Psychology of Religion, and as president of the International
Association for the Psychology of Religion.
Shalom H. Schwartz, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Shalom H. Schwartz is emeritus professor of psychology at the Hebrew
University and scientific supervisor at the International Laboratory of
Socio-Cultural Research at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. He
has also taught at the Universities of Wisconsin and Princeton. He is a past
president of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology
and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. His individual
and culture level value theories have been used in research in more than
75 countries. His current research applies his value theories in the fields of
politics, religion, and ethnicity.
Rachel Seginer, University of Haifa, Israel
Rachel Seginer is professor emerita of human development and education
in the Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel. Her research and
xxii Contributors

teaching in developmental psychology has focused on adolescent devel-


opment in cultural settings examining relationships with parents, sib-
lings, and peers, parents’ educational involvement, and future orientation.
Her book Future Orientation: Developmental and Ecological Perspectives
(2009), reviews her work on future orientation, its antecedents and out-
comes and integrates research carried out since the 1930s on future ori-
entation and interfacing approaches across the lifespan and divergent
cultural settings.
Rivka Shir, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Rivka Shir is currently a BA student in psychology in the psychology depart-
ment, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research interests focus
on the development of altruism in decision making and on the role of reli-
gion with regard to values.
Anja Steinbach, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Anja Steinbach is professor of sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen;
she received her PhD in 2003 and Habilitation in 2010 (Chemnitz
University of Technology). She has been lecturer, senior researcher, and
manager of PAIRFAM, the German Family Panel, at Chemnitz University
of Technology. She currently serves as president of the section for Sociology
of Family in the German Sociological Association. Her research focus is on
step-families, division of household labor, intergenerational relationships,
and migrant families.
Gisela Trommsdorff, University of Konstanz, Germany
Gisela Trommsdorff is professor emeritus for developmental and
cross-cultural psychology at the University of Konstanz. She is research
professor at DIW/GSOEP, Berlin, and president of the German-Japanese
Society for Social Sciences. Her main research interests are in intergen-
erational relations and children’s socioemotional development in cultural
contexts, including Asia, the United States, and Europe. She has published
numerous book chapters and articles in international journals and is
coeditor of several books. She has served on several editorial and advisory
boards. She is member of the Academy of Sciences in Erfurt and recipient
of the German Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class.
Yukiko Uchida, Kyoto University, Japan
Yukiko Uchida received her PhD from Kyoto University in 2003. She is
associate professor in the Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University. She
has investigated how culture shapes emotional experiences and social rela-
tionships, as well as happiness and subjective well-being across cultures.
Contributors xxiii

Li Wang, Peking University, China


Li Wang is an associate professor in the Psychology Department, Peking
University. Her research focuses on children’s social emotion and emotion
regulation and their role in social, school, and psychological adjustment
from a contextual-developmental perspective. She has conducted, in col-
laboration with her international colleagues, a series of longitudinal proj-
ects on Chinese and Western children’s social emotion development. She is
also interested in how schools, families, and peers influence the develop-
ment of social functioning in early childhood. She has published in many
journals such as Child Development, International Journal of Behavioral
Development, and Pediatrics.
Yan Z. Wang, Endicott College, United States
Yan Z. Wang is assistant professor at Endicott College. Dr. Wang has pub-
lished on methodological issues in cultural studies, dinnertime family
interactions, and immigrant parenting.
Ran Zilber, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Ran Zilber is currently an MA student on the clinical psychology track,
Psychology Department, Tel Aviv University. He holds a BA in psychology
from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Preface

The focus of this volume is the development of adolescents’ values and


religiosity in cultural context. Values are a major motivational and norma-
tive basis for the development of individual identity, belief systems, and
behaviors. Moreover, values serve to guide social processes in interpersonal
interactions. Similarly, religious beliefs and practices play a significant role
in adolescent social behaviors, relationships, and adjustment. Adolescents’
values and religiosity are typically related to cultural norms and models.
Cultural factors affect what specific values and religious beliefs are endorsed
by adolescents in the society and how value and religious systems direct
their beliefs, decision making, and actions during their development.
However, research on adolescents’ values and religiosity has unfortu-
nately been conducted primarily in Western societies, and the role of the
cultural context has received relatively little attention in both theoretical
and empirical approaches. As a result, our understanding of adolescents’
values and religious functioning has been largely limited to Western, par-
ticularly North American, cultures.
Over the past few decades, interest in the role of culture in value and
religious development in adolescence has burgeoned and has expanded
exponentially in many regions of the world, particularly Asia, Europe, the
Middle East, and South America. A number of research programs have
developed in different cultural contexts; the findings so far are inconsis-
tent. In this volume, we intend to address the questions of whether and
how adolescent values and religious beliefs and behaviors may vary in their
prevalence, interpretations, causes, and consequences across cultures. For
example, across cultures, adolescents may differ in their perceived impor-
tance of values such as personal achievement and group well-being. There

xxv
xxvi Preface

are also substantial cultural variations in religious orientation, beliefs, prac-


tices, and involvement. Relatedly, cultural values guide the interpretation of
specific values, religious beliefs, and behaviors and thus impart psycholog-
ical “meanings” related to a worldview. Consequently, the developmental
processes and patterns of values and religion may differ from one culture
to another.
In preparation for this volume, the editors organized an international
and interdisciplinary conference in 2010 at the Marbach Castle, supported
by the Jacobs Foundation. At the conference, 25 scholars from Europe, the
United States, Israel, Canada, China, Palestine, Japan, Indonesia, and India
presented their studies and, together with 10 junior researchers, discussed
issues related to values and religion in youth development. The conference
cut across several areas of psychology, sociology, and religious studies. This
book is largely a product of the conference, although the chapters in the
book do not simply summarize the conference presentations and discus-
sions. The book builds on intensive discussions and further research fol-
lowing the conference. The authors of each chapter attempt to provide a
novel and broad perspective on culture, values, and religion in youth devel-
opment, and to integrate theoretical approaches and empirical findings on
a particular topic.
The chapters in this volume are concerned with various issues in the
field, such as the impact of social changes and cultural conditions on values
and religious orientations and practices, culturally prescribed socialization
processes in value and religious development, the cultural interpretations
of adolescents’ religious experience and expression, and adaptive and mal-
adaptive values and religious activities from a cultural perspective. The
authors have incorporated into their discussions findings from research
programs that have used multiple methodologies, including both qualita-
tive (e.g., interviewing) and quantitative (e.g., large-scale surveys, standard-
ized questionnaires) approaches, and adolescents in cultures from East to
West and from South to North (Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and
ethnic groups in the United States, and Western and Eastern Europe). The
authors also pay attention to various religious and nonreligious groups (e.g.,
Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu for religious groups).
This volume consists of 18 chapters in 4 parts. It is unique in that it focuses
on social and cultural contexts, includes perspectives from multidisciplin-
ary backgrounds, and presents recent research findings based on diverse
methodologies. Most chapters are organized according to theoretical issues
with an in-depth discussion of related empirical findings concerning basic
developmental processes, culture, social values, and religion. The volume is
Preface xxvii

of interest not only to social and behavioral scientists who study adolescent
development, but also to sociologists, economists, and political scientists.
This volume is also useful to educators and practitioners (e.g., counseling
and clinical psychologists, social workers) who provide services to youth,
particularly with diverse cultural backgrounds.
To conclude, values and religion as part of cultural context obviously play
a substantial role in adolescent development. As most societies in today’s
world are undergoing rapid changes, how values, religious beliefs, and cul-
ture affect social competence, attitudes, and behaviors of adolescents in
their adaptation to the new environment is an important issue for develop-
mental scientists. Our goal in putting together this volume is to provide a
forum for systematic and in-depth discussions of theoretical perspectives,
research findings, existing problems in the research, and strategies to solve
the problems in this area. We hope these discussions will be conducive to a
better understanding of adolescent development in a changing context and
further exploration of the involvement of contextual factors in development
in the future.
Acknowledgments

This volume could not be produced without the substantial contribution of


the authors and the support of many individuals. Therefore, we are indebted
to all who contributed to this book.
We are particularly grateful to Simon Sommer, who was responsible for
coordinating the conference. He always provided helpful advice in solving
problems in the preparation and organization of the conference. The editors
also owe special thanks to the Advisory Board of the Jacobs Foundation for
their trust and support.
The volume also benefited from other participants in the conference who
did not author a chapter in this volume but who contributed to the discus-
sion at the conference. We want to express our gratitude to Jeanette Ziehm
for her careful secretarial support, her continuous highly responsible assis-
tance throughout all the stages of the production of this volume, and her
patience and efficiency in managing unexpected work loads. Finally, we
want to thank Holly Bunje for her language editing of three contributions,
and the staff of Cambridge University Press for their work in producing this
volume.

xxix
Part One
Theoretical Perspectives on Values,
Religion, and Adolescent Development
in Cultural Context
1 Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion
in Adolescent Development
A Conceptual Overview and Synthesis

Gisela Trommsdorff

Abstract
This chapter discusses why research on adolescent development will benefit
from a focus on values and religion using a culture-sensitive approach. In
the first part, the relations among culture, values, and religion in adolescent
development are briefly summarized. The second part deals with the topic
of adolescent values, and the third part addresses religion and religiosity.
Each part discusses relevant research from a multidisciplinary perspective
and highlights major issues, results, and gaps in sociological and psycho-
logical research. Finally, the theoretical and empirical contributions of this
volume are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research in order
to achieve a better understanding of adolescent development in a changing
cultural context.

Can a cultural perspective on adolescent values and religion contribute


to a better understanding of the dynamics of adolescent development?
Adolescents experience major biological, psychological, and social transi-
tions that may be characterized as relatively universal developmental chal-
lenges (Graber & Brooks-Gunn, 1996). However, research has primarily
focused on European-American adolescents, disregarding the cultural con-
text of development. This is surprising given that Bronfenbrenner (1979)
introduced an ecological perspective into developmental psychology
more than three decades ago. Even globalization and growing awareness
of the cultural and socioeconomic diversity of adolescent environments
have rarely resulted in empirical research (Steinberg & Morris, 2001).
Only recently were some culture-informed edited volumes (e.g., Arnett,
2012; Brown, Larson, & Saraswathi, 2002) and theoretically based culture-
­sensitive reviews (Arnett, 2011) on adolescent development published.

3
4 Trommsdorff

What can a culture-sensitive approach to adolescent development


contribute? First, it may help clarify questions about how values and reli-
gion impact adolescent development. Values and religion are assumed
to be important in adolescent development as part of the formation of
a meaningful view of the self and the world (Rothbaum & Wang, 2010;
Trommsdorff, 2012). The construction of self- and world-views is often
motivated by identity development, one of the main developmental tasks
in adolescence (Erikson, 1968). Identity has been seen as providing a sense
of coherence and continuity in one’s life, thereby reducing uncertainty and
confusion in understanding oneself, one’s relation to others, and the world.
However, it is not clear which factors contribute to the processes and out-
comes of identity development. For example, an extension of the social and
cultural boun­daries and contexts because of an increasing globalization has
given rise to multiple choices in identity development (Azmitia, Syed, &
Radmacher, 2008).
The present volume attempts to clarify the role of culture, values, and
religion as the assumed major factors in adolescent development. These
factors are seen here as part of interrelated meaning systems influenc-
ing self- and world-views. They are also seen as part of social institu-
tions and personal (e.g., peer, parent–child) relationships representing
distant and proximal contexts for adolescents’ development. A number
of open issues have to be dealt with to achieve a better understanding
of how adolescent development is related to the cultural context, val-
ues, and religion, and how these affect the development of adolescents’
self- and world-views, goals, behavior, everyday practices, and social
adjustment.
In this overview, I begin with a brief outline of the main issues in past
research on adolescent development in cultural context. This is followed
by sections on values and youth and on religion and youth, both from
a culture-informed perspective. These two sections note open questions
from past research and highlight insights from this volume regarding
the interrelations of culture, values, and religion in adolescent develop-
ment. As a whole, this volume is organized around four major issues in
research on adolescent development, each of which is affected by the mul-
tiple interrelations of culture, values, and religion: (1) theoretical perspec-
tives, (2) universal and culture-specific functions of values and religion
in adolescent development, (3) adolescent adjustment in times of social
change, and (4) socialization processes of values and religion in adoles-
cent development.
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 5

Culture, Values, and Religion in Adolescent Development


What do we know about adolescent development cross-culturally in a glo-
balizing world where different values and religions prevail?
Developmental science assumes basic processes of development ranging
from biological, psychological, and social functions to societal, ecological,
cultural, and historical levels (e.g., Lerner, Lewin-Bizan, & Warren, 2011).
Adolescent development is a period in the lifespan that includes systematic
successive changes in the person, based on changes at the biological, psy-
chological, social, and cultural levels, with nature and nurture interacting
in the dynamics of development. The dynamic systems approach to ado-
lescent development (Kunnen, 2012) attempts to provide explanations for
stability and change based on nonlinear interaction processes. Normative
and history-graded factors are especially relevant in adolescence and early
adulthood (Baltes & Brim, 1980). These factors are regarded here as part of
individual-context relations, assuming that their influence is modified by
cultural phenomena and individual agency in development. This assump-
tion has recently stimulated some culture-informed research (see Arnett,
2006, 2011, 2012; Brown et al., 2002), but many questions still remain unan-
swered. Therefore, a main purpose of this volume is to clarify whether and
in which aspects adolescent development is similar or different in vary-
ing parts of the world, and what role values and religion play in adolescent
development in different cultural contexts.
Our interest in cultural perspectives on values and religion in adolescent
development is informed by ecological theorizing (Bronfenbrenner, 1979),
questions regarding interactions between person and context (“goodness of
fit”), and the assumption of adolescents as agents of their development. From
an ecological perspective, values and religion constitute developmental con-
texts where family, peers, and school play important roles in adolescents’
socialization in the respective culture. The goal of the culture-informed
ecological approach is to take into account cross-cultural and intracultural
differences in adolescent development while also analyzing universal pro-
cesses. However, research to date has largely neglected the role of culture
with respect to the function of values and religion in adolescent develop-
ment. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the
relevant literature, note unanswered questions, and describe the contribu-
tions of chapters in this volume, all of which highlight the importance of
cultural variables for values and religion in adolescents’ development.
Cultural variables have been related to various macrolevel variables such
as aspects of socioeconomic status (e.g., economic growth, educational level,
6 Trommsdorff

urbanization, etc.), and to the individual-level variables of value orientation


and religiosity. Both levels of cultural variables are relevant for developmen-
tal processes and outcomes. “Culture” has been conceptualized in different
ways in past research. Sociologists have described culture with collective
and individual representations (Durkheim, 1981) or as “norm-cycles” in
line with an “objective” culture (Elder-Vass, 2010). Anthropologists have
described cultures with respect to rituals, myths, symbols (Jahoda, 2007),
cultural practices (Cole & Packer, 2011), or “Gemeinschaft”–“Gesellschaft”
(Greenfield, 2010). Psychologists have used the concepts of cultural dimen-
sions (e.g., individualism, collectivism; Hofstede, 1980; Triandis, 1995),
tight and loose cultures (Gelfand et al., 2011), shared meaning systems
(Bruner, 1990), cultural tasks (Kitayama & Imada, 2010), or cultural mod-
els of agency (e.g., independence, interdependence) describing how spe-
cific beliefs, values, and practices vary across nations (Markus & Kitayama,
1991). Here, I perceive culture as a complex, major developmental context
offering specific cultural models of agency, which imply certain self- and
world-views (Rothbaum & Wang, 2010; Trommsdorff, 2012). These cultural
models of agency influence further developmental contexts on different
levels of socialization, such as at the macrolevel of economic, educational,
and religious institutions and the microlevel of the family.
Developmental contexts can undergo processes of historical and social
change. Adolescents in many parts of the world experience sociopo-
litical, economic, and cultural changes that have an impact on their lives
(e.g., regarding family, employment, technology, mobility, health). Several
reviews on adolescent development have shown that the experience of tran-
sitions and changes does not necessarily result in problematic or difficult
development (e.g., Coleman, 2011; Steinberg, 1999). Empirical research
has dealt with questions of whether certain political and socioeconomic
changes include risks and chances and how these impact adolescent devel-
opment (e.g., Chen, 2012; Chen & French, 2008; Elder & Shanahan, 2006;
Kagitcibasi, 2006, 2007; Trommsdorff, 2009b). However, several questions
remain, some of which are dealt with in this volume by focusing on different
cultures, values, and religious orientations. For example, issues during times
of social change are examined by discussing the impact of values for adjust-
ment (see Norasakkunkit & Uchida, Chapter 9 in this volume, for Japanese
youth; Chen, Wang, & Liu, Chapter 10 in this volume, for Chinese youth).
An important aspect of adolescents’ development is related to values in
the cultural context. Adolescents undergo processes of identity develop-
ment that reflect on cultural and individual values and beliefs as part of one’s
relation to the world. During this developmental period of constructing
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 7

self- and world-views (see Kornadt, Chapter 2 in this volume; Rothbaum,


Wang, & Cohen, Chapter 3 in this volume), adolescents are determining
which values to adopt to guide their own individual development, includ-
ing goal setting, decision making, and behavior (e.g., Alsaker & Kroger,
2006). Because there is little research on the role of cultural factors in the
development of values, related questions – including questions of cultural
fit (as a condition for positive development) and processes in the socializa-
tion and transmission of values among peers or from parents to their ado-
lescent children – are addressed in all sections of this volume.
Assuming that the development of adolescents’ values is related to more
general cultural value orientations, questions also arise as to whether and
in which way values are related to religion and individual religiosity, and
whether religion and religiosity have a specific function in adolescent devel-
opment. In past research, the relations between values and religion have
seldom been studied systematically. Researchers have usually investigated
values and religion in relative isolation. Exceptions are Rokeach (1969) and
a meta-analysis by Saroglou, Delpierre, and Dernelle (2004).
Past neglect of this issue may be owing to a relative lack of psychological
research on the role of religiosity and religion in adolescent development
(Roelkepartain, King, Wagener, & Benson, 2005). Recently, questions that
have been of specific interest include whether the often-assumed increase
in secularization, the rise of religious fundamentalism, and the develop-
ment of new forms of spirituality are relevant to positive youth development
(King & Roeser, 2009). For a fruitful study of these questions, researchers
must take into account both cultural variables and the effect these variables
may have on adolescents’ developmental pathways.
Therefore, the present volume attempts to address the relations between
culture, religion, and values in adolescent development. These issues are
discussed with respect to theoretical approaches and empirical studies
focusing on socialization conditions for developmental outcomes such as
adolescent adjustment. For example, Kornadt (Chapter 2) discusses theo-
retical questions on the roles of culture, values, and religion in adolescent
development from historical, motivation-psychological, and cultural per-
spectives. Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen (Chapter 3) provide a theoretical
framework assuming cultural differences in the development and quality of
self-awareness related to differences in spirituality. Saroglou (Chapter 17)
integrates empirical findings into a theoretical approach on the psychologi-
cal functions of religiosity as an individual difference dimension, pointing
out the different impact of religion on personal stability as compared to
personal growth. This approach is related to questions on developmental
8 Trommsdorff

outcomes and conditions. Other chapter topics include the role of culture,
values, and religion in adjustment of Indian (Mishra, Chapter 18) and
Indonesian Muslim youth (French, Eisenberg, Purwono, & Sallquist, Chapter
6), as well as the role of religion and culture in life-satisfaction (Bond, Lun,
& Li, Chapter 5), in future orientation of Israeli Palestinian girls (Seginer &
Mahajna, Chapter 11), in career orientation of U.S. girls (Pearce & Hardie,
Chapter 12), and in romantic relationships of Israeli and German adoles-
cents (Nauck & Steinbach, Chapter 13). Several authors deal with the social-
ization and developmental conditions for the role of culture, religion, and
values in adolescent development. For example, Granqvist discusses precon-
ditions and implications of attachment in the development of adolescents’
self- and world-views. Socialization in the family in different cultures is dis-
cussed by several authors (e.g., Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, & Shir, Chapter
16; Mayer & Trommsdorff, Chapter 15; Rubin, Malti, & McDonald, Chapter
8), as are the effects of culture and socialization in the peer group (Chen
et al., Chapter 10; French et al., Chapter 6; Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, &
Rompala, Chapter 7). Cultural socialization in different educational institu-
tions is discussed by Mishra for Indian youth (Chapter 18).
To summarize, the work in this volume assumes that cultural models of
agency give meaning to values and religion and also influence their role in
adolescent development. However, studies on the nature, correlates, and
function of adolescents’ values and religious orientations in cultural con-
texts are rare in developmental research. Therefore, selected major theoreti-
cal and empirical contributions to this topic, open questions, and insights
from chapters of this volume are summarized in the following overviews on
values and religion.

Values and Youth from a Culture-Informed Perspective


Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to Values
From a social sciences and psychological perspective, values are embedded
in culture: they impact the societal institutions and they structure, moti-
vate, and give meaning to individual behavior and social interactions. The
meaning of certain values is influenced by the self- and world-view trans-
mitted in a certain culture. For example, the values of freedom, honor, and
justice have different meanings in different cultural contexts. In line with
Schwartz (1992), values are defined here as desirable, transsituationally
enduring goals that vary in importance and serve as guiding principles in
people’s lives. The internalization of cultural values constitutes an impor-
tant developmental task for adolescents in all cultures.
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 9

Sociological Approaches.  Weber (1988) and Parsons (1951), the found-


ing fathers of value research in sociology, distinguished between individual
values (motivational aspects) and group values (normative aspects; Parsons
& Shils, 1951). Interestingly, although this differentiation is difficult to assess
empirically, it still guides most research on values. More recently, theories
on modernization and secularization have shifted the perspective in value
research, focusing on questions of stability and changes in values.
Early value research assumed that the cultural context is interwoven
with values, norms, and meaning. An example is the famous Values Project
by Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961), which was influenced by sociolo-
gists (e.g., Talcott Parsons), social psychologists (George Homans), and
anthropologists (John and Beatrice Whiting), among others. This Values
Project was a starting point for several studies to focus on value orienta-
tions as a means to differentiate cultural dimensions. However, according to
D’Andrade (2008), the study of cultural values was left without an organiz-
ing framework. In his recent study on value orientations in three societies,
D’Andrade (2008) dealt with institutionalized values, personal values, and
the degree of fit between both, thus relating issues from sociological and
psychological value research in his anthropological approach on personal
and cultural values. Across societies, he did not see many differences in
personal values due to universal needs and motives; however, differences in
institutionalized values were great. The antecedents of values are seen in the
cultural heritage of ideas, in institutions (norms, roles), and in individual
feelings and motives. Accordingly, some values may be stable while other
values may change.
The influential sociological theory on value change by Ronald Inglehart
(1977, 1997, 2007) assumes that values change from materialism (tra-
ditional values) to post-materialism in industrializing countries. Traditional
­“materialist” values are seen in the need for security, achievement, and disci-
pline; modern “post-materialist” values include the need for self-realization,
participation, and environmental concerns (Inglehart & Baker, 2000). Three
basic assumptions underlie Inglehart’s theory on the “silent revolution”:
(1) the socialization thesis, which assumes a lifelong stability of values that
are formed in early childhood; (2) the thesis of a generation-specific value
change, which contrasts to the life-cycle assumption and to the assumption
of period effects (historical events such as the postwar period or reunification
of Germany); and (3) the basic-need thesis, which refers to Maslow’s (1943)
assumption of a hierarchy of material and nonmaterial needs. Adolescent
development is of special importance to Inglehart because he believes that
changes in adolescents’ values can drive societal value changes.
10 Trommsdorff

Inglehart’s (1977, 1997, 2007) assumptions on long-term effects of


socialization experiences in childhood and adolescence, on the validity of
Maslow’s theory on a hierarchy of needs, and on the effects of moderni-
zation as typical for industrial societies has been criticized on theoretical
and empirical grounds. Related discussions have stimulated an extensive
research program in social and political science based on national compari-
sons of value change, partly modifying Inglehart’s original theory (Inglehart
& Welzel, 2005). The Eurobarometer, the European Values Study (EVS), the
World Values Survey (WVS), and other sources of data were coordinated
for the European Social Survey (ESS; e.g., Inglehart, Basañez, & Moreno,
1998; Jowell, Kaase, Fitzgerald, & Eva, 2007). These comparative studies
have challenged the assumption that secularization is increasing while the
value of religiosity is declining (e.g., Pettersson, 2007).
Another major topic in the discussions on value change is whether an
individualization of family values has taken place. In their study on two
decades of value change in Europe and the United States (based on the
European Values Study), Scott and Braun (2006) concluded that the indi-
vidualization thesis is overstated because considerable diversity in ­family
values across Western countries can be observed. This result is in line
with research on the similarities and differences of family values of ado-
lescents across Western and Asian societies, and across “modern” versus
traditional countries (Mayer & Trommsdorff, 2010; Chapter 15 in this vol-
ume). Furthermore, cross-cultural studies on value change have shown that
value changes do not follow the same patterns; for example, “traditional”
and “modern” values can coexist (e.g., Chen, 2012; Kagitsibasi, 2006, 2007;
Trommsdorff, 2007; Trommsdorff,Cole, & Heikamp, in press; Trommsdorff,
Suzuki, & Sasaki, 1987).
Chapters in this volume focusing on family-related values in differ-
ent cultures present results that underline the impact of religious belief
in the specific cultural context. These results specify the interrelations
among culture, values, and religion regarding family values (e.g., Mayer
& Trommsdorff, Chapter 15; Nauck & Steinbach, Chapter 13; Seginer &
Mahajna, Chapter 11).
In general, the assessment of values and value change has to differentiate
between the cultural/societal and the individual levels. More specifically,
questions regarding the stability and change of values and the different
phenomena of value change over the lifespan and across situations remain
to be discussed. Most important, the confounding effects of time period,
cohort, and aging have to be disentangled. This brings us to psychological
approaches.
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 11

Psychological Approaches.  Values have long been a topic in psychology


beginning with the work of Wilhelm Wundt (1926), the founding father of
experimental psychology, who attempted to study the sociocultural basis
of psychological phenomena as part of his Völkerpsychologie. One of the
earliest examples of an empirically oriented approach was that of Allport
and Vernon (1931) influenced by Spranger’s (1921) “Lebensformen.” An
influential approach to the study of values was initiated by Milton Rokeach
(1973) on the basis of his widely used Rokeach Value Survey (RVS), which,
however, did not follow a consistent theoretical model. His view on values
as guiding principles in people’s behavior (Rokeach, 1973) is generally in
line with Schwartz (1992).
Schwartz’s complex theoretical model allows researchers to study values
on both the cultural and individual levels, including individual differences
in value priorities and their effects on attitudes and behavior. His theory
on the structure of human values refers to culture-specific and universal
aspects. A central assumption of Schwartz’s theory of basic individual val-
ues is that the array of values represents a circular continuum of motiva-
tions. Partitioning the continuum into 10 discrete values or into broader or
more finely tuned value constructs depends on how one’s preference dis-
criminates among motivations. The underlying structure of the relations
among the 10 value types has been validated in more than 50 countries
(e.g., Schwartz, 2006), supporting the assumption of a universal structure of
human values. The study by Bilsky, Janik, and Schwartz (2011) based on the
European Social Survey supported the circular structure across and within
countries across time. Results also showed less deviation from the structure
in more developed countries (with larger contrast between protection and
growth values). Recently, Schwartz and Vecchione (2011, June) presented
a revised theory allowing for greater predictive and interpretive power by
partitioning the value continuum into 19 distinct values (which can be com-
bined to recapture the original 10 or the 4 higher-order values). In a study
of 73 countries, the dimensions suggested by Inglehart and by Schwartz are
shown to be overlapping (Schwartz, 2006). These results support the idea of
national cultures without neglecting intracultural variations.
However, several questions remain to be answered, such as whether
and when a universal motivational structure of relations among values of
adolescents from different cultures and age groups emerges, and whether
there are differences in the impact of values on social behavior. In this vol-
ume, Schwartz discusses additional refined questions. His contribution is
based on the analyses of representative national samples from 30 countries,
including different religious groups and different developmental stages
12 Trommsdorff

(mid- and late adolescence), taking into account the motivational structure
of values and value priorities, and the impact of religion and religiosity on
value priorities and attitudes toward family, prosocial behavior, and accep-
tance of the law. The implications of his study are manifold, suggesting the
need for more research on the role of parents and the agency of adolescents
(e.g., rejecting or accepting parents’ values) in their value development.
From a different theoretical perspective, Hofstede (1980, 2001), a pio-
neer in the study of cultural dimensions of values, proposed a culture-level
approach; his focus is on national-level patterns of values. Many studies have
used his concept of individualism/collectivism as a personality variable and
for predicting behavior (for features distinguishing individualists from collec-
tivists on the individual level, see Triandis, 1995). However, the assumption
that individualism/collectivism are two poles of one dimension is not sup-
ported empirically, as Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier (2002) showed
in their extensive meta-analysis. Another problem is that the individual level
and the cultural level have often been confused in past research. It is neces-
sary to ask how individual and cultural value orientations are interrelated,
and how the individual and cultural levels of values can be disentangled (for
overviews, see Davidov, Schmidt, & Billiet, 2011; Smith & Schwartz, 1997;
van de Vijver, Hemert, & Poortinga, 2008; for an example of an empirical
cross-cultural study on values of adolescents regarding their future and the
family, see Mayer & Trommsdorff, 2010).
The question of whether values can predict behavior has been dealt with
in various studies, which, however, have mostly ignored the role of cultural
variables. A cultural focus for the prediction of behavior is suggested by
Schwartz’s value theory and also by the social axioms theory that draws on
expectancy-value theory to predict behavior (e.g., Bond, Leung, Au, Tong,
& Chemonges-Nielson, 2004). There is considerable empirical evidence on
the motivational and behavioral qualities of values based on the Schwartz
Value Theory. According to Schwartz (2006), values represent priorities in
life and serve a motivational function. Self-reported value priorities are
related to certain personality variables and reported (or observed) behav-
iors such as prosocial, antisocial, environmental, political, consumer, and
intellectual behaviors (see Bardi & Schwartz, 2003, for a review). However,
research on individual and cultural/structural aspects regarding the value-
behavior relationship is still rare (for exceptions, see Schwartz, 1996;
Schwartz & Sagi, 2000; Schwartz, Chapter 4 in this volume).

Development of Adolescents’ Value Orientations


Only a few culture-informed studies on adolescents’ development of val-
ues are available. Therefore, this volume attempts to contribute to this open
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 13

issue. Adolescence has been recognized as a crucial period for value devel-
opment. In the literature, it is widely assumed that a certain level of abstract
thinking, brain maturation, and identity formation is a precondition for
adolescents’ value development (cf. Nurmi, 1998; Schwarz, 2007). Erikson’s
(1968) view of the process of identity formation has been further elaborated
by Marcia (1966; for a meta-analysis of studies on identity status change, see
Kroger, Martinussen, & Marcia, 2010). Recent discussions by Azmitia et al.
(2008) on identity, including the individual and social self, link the develop-
ment of a personal identity and a social identity, opening the perspective for
interdisciplinary approaches on adolescent development (Phinney, 2008).
This recent issue may stimulate a culture-informed approach as suggested
in the present volume.
Several value-related studies on adolescent development have dealt
with adolescents’ self-concept (e.g., a longitudinal study by Alsaker &
Olweus, 1992), life goals (e.g., Grob, 1998; Nurmi, 1998), or future orienta-
tion (Steinberg et al., 2009; for an extensive overview, see Seginer, 2009).
However, culture and religion have rarely been taken into account in these
studies. Therefore, the present volume addresses this gap and includes
chapters that address the often missing link between specific aspects of self
and culture. Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen (Chapter 3) discuss the increas-
ing self-awareness in adolescence and explain cultural differences in key
concepts of self-awareness, related to the vantage point of awareness, the
conception of self, and the nature of self-evaluation. The authors further
discuss the function of these aspects of self-awareness in cultural differ-
ences in spirituality. Two other chapters discuss the relation between future
orientation (occupational aspirations) and religious socialization (e.g.,
Seginer and Mahajna [Chapter 11] for Israeli Palestinian girls; Pearce and
Hardie [Chapter 12] for girls from the United States).
Research on values leads to the further question of the relations between
values and behavior. Findings of relations between prosocial values, moral
development, and prosocial behavior such as civic engagement or politi-
cal activity (e.g., Flanagan, 2004) have stimulated questions regarding the
context in which such values and behaviors develop. In this volume, Rubin,
Malti, and McDonald (Chapter 8) investigate personal relationships and
moral development in relation to the development of civic competence.
Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala (Chapter 7) examine peer pro-
cesses associated with the development of prosocial values and how they
are shaped by culture. The authors base their discussion on (“youth-cen-
tered”) programs including ethnically diverse youth. These chapters are of
special interest for better understanding the role of values in positive youth
development.
14 Trommsdorff

Although there is much evidence for the validity of Schwartz’s (1992)


theory regarding the universal structure of values for college students, the
question arises as to whether a universal value structure also occurs for
younger age groups or at an earlier developmental age. So far, only a few
studies on the actual development of adolescents’ values have been carried
out. In 2004, Bubeck and Bilsky showed that for a large sample of German
children and adolescents (aged 10–17 years), the value structure of both
the younger and older youths was similar and in line with Schwartz’s con-
ceptualization of 10 basic values (see also Boehnke & Welzel, 2006). In this
volume, Schwartz (Chapter 4) extends this issue and investigates whether
his value theory is also applicable to adolescents of different developmental
ages and from different religions and cultures.
However, these studies do not deal with questions of developmental pro-
cesses of values. Therefore, a developmental and culture-sensitive approach
is needed for further clarification. A promising approach is the theoretical
model by Markus and Kitayama (1991), who discuss the impact of cultural
values on the independent and interdependent self. The authors conceive of
self-construals as reflecting basic cultural models and individual value ori-
entations. In line with this view, Rothbaum, Pott, Azuma, Miyake, and Weisz
(2000) showed that adolescent development, including values and beliefs,
follows a developmental path that is organized according to the respective
cultural model (e.g. “path of symbiotic harmony and path of generative ten-
sion”). Accordingly, the cultural models of independence and interdepen-
dence can be assumed to structure the value development of adolescents,
affecting the developmental task of individuation and the related values of
autonomy and relatedness in culture-specific ways. However, the values of
autonomy and relatedness (1) have a differing importance and meaning; (2)
are related to each other differently in Western versus Asian cultures; and
(3) influence the social, emotional, and cognitive development of adoles-
cents, including their value orientations (for a culture-informed overview,
see Rothbaum & Trommsdorff, 2007; Trommsdorff, 2007; Trommsdorff &
Rothbaum, 2008).
Research on adolescents’ cultural value development is an important
step forward. However, open questions remain to be answered, such as how
the socialization and transmission of values in the cultural context occurs.
Socialization and the transmission of value orientations are influenced
by parents, peers, and other agents in interaction with the adolescents,
while child-rearing practices and parent–child relationships are influen-
tial mechanisms in the transmission process. According to the model by
Grusec and Goodnow (1994), children’s accuracy of perception and their
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 15

acceptance of parental values accounts for parent–child value congruence.


These factors relate to the quality of the relationship between the parent and
child (for culture-specific patterns of bidirectionality, see Trommsdorff,
2007; Trommsdorff & Kornadt, 2003), interparental value agreement, and
the general value orientation in the respective culture, all of which are
important factors for the transmission of values (Knafo & Schwartz, 2009;
Trommsdorff, 2006, 2009a).
However, this model needs further specifications regarding the negotiation,
transmission, and modification across generations. These issues are addressed
in this volume by Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, and Shir (Chapter 16) who
demonstrate how religion affects the intergenerational continuity of values in
different cultural groups. This chapter underlines the interrelations between
culture, religion, and values in adolescent development.
Considerable research into parent–child similarity was stimulated by
the assumption that similarity is an indicator of parents’ successful influ-
ence over and socialization of adolescents. However, congruence of values
between parents and children can indicate various phenomena beyond
successful unidirectional transmission of values. Congruence may depend
on the content of the value; for example, congruence is usually higher
for religious than for nonreligious values (Miller & Glass, 1989). Other
sources of parent–child congruence in values beside the unidirectional
influence of parents include children’s impact on their parents’ values,
genetically based factors (shared temperament), and/or environmental
conditions such as high normativity of certain values affecting the social-
ization process and reinforcing parents’ and children’s values (Albert,
2007; Albert, Trommsdorff, & Sabatier, 2011; Boehnke, Hadjar, & Baier,
2009; Friedlmeier & Trommsdorff, 2011; Knafo et al., Chapter 16 in this
volume; Knafo & Schwartz, 2009; Trommsdorff, 2009a). Value congruence
between parents and children is related to the issue of the effects of nor-
mativity of values, which is discussed in several chapters of this volume.
Further, Norasakkunkit and Uchida (Chapter 9) describe how adolescents’
low preference for dominant cultural values of interdependence may be
related to their social withdrawal. This is an especially relevant issue in
times of social change.
In a changing environment, or for migrant youth, the transmission of
values is even more difficult to measure and explain. When values in the
learning environment of school do not coincide with peer values and val-
ues in the family, the adolescent has to cope with conflicting expectations
and special problems of identity achievement (e.g., Knafo, Assor, Schwartz,
& David, 2009). This problem is discussed by Knafo et al., Chapter 16 in
16 Trommsdorff

this volume. Furthermore, the zeitgeist, the dominant mainstream belief of


the majority of a society, influences value congruence, as Boehnke et al.
(2009) have shown. Immigrants who are acculturating within a new cul-
tural environment prefer “in-group-serving” types of values across gen-
erations (Kornadt, Chapter 2 in this volume; Phalet & Schönpflug, 2001).
Collectivistic groups prefer higher authoritarianism while endorsing warm
relationships that promote the transmission of values more easily (Rudy &
Grusec, 2001).
Of special importance is the study of value similarities in multigen-
eration families and related analyses of historical and developmental
changes in the transmission of values (Bengtson, 1975, Silverstein, Gans,
Lowenstein, Giarrusso, & Bengtson, 2010). For this research, a fam-
ily design is necessary, which is only rarely used for empirical studies.
Exceptions include studies on self-reports of values and life goals of
three family generations (for one culture, see Grob, Weisheit, & Gomez,
2009). The recent Value of Children research has initiated cross-cultural
comparisons based on two- and three-generation family designs to study
changes in value orientations regarding the family and children (e.g.,
Albert, 2007; Albert et al., 2011; Mayer, Trommsdorff, Kagitcibasi, &
Mishra, in press; Nauck, 2009, 2010; Trommsdorff, 2009a; Trommsdorff,
Mayer, & Albert, 2004).
This research on specific individual value orientations and behavior in
relation to national levels of cultural values and socioeconomic develop-
ment has been initiated by Trommsdorff and Nauck (2005, 2006, 2010),
building on the previous Value of Children (VOC) studies by Arnold et
al. (1975), Hoffman and Hoffman (1973), and Kagitcibasi (1973). This
theoretically and methodologically revised VOC research program is
investigating the relations between aspects of culture (e.g., social struc-
ture, urbanization), individual value orientations, and behavior (fertil-
ity and child-rearing goals and practices) in three generations, taking
into account sociocultural changes. These studies also demonstrate the
function of the value of children and family for fertility behavior, pro-
viding cultural, structural, and psychological explanations (Nauck, 2010;
Trommsdorff & Nauck, 2005, 2010). This research attempts to integrate
the individual and cultural levels for the study of values and behavior in
a cross-cultural and multigenerational design. Cultural conditions and
changing socialization contexts for the development of adolescents’ val-
ues have been shown to be of special importance. Mayer and Trommsdorff
(Chapter 15) discuss some of these issues, focusing on family values in
times of social change.
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 17

To date, only a few studies have taken into account sociocultural changes
as a changing context for adolescent development. In an extensive analy-
sis, the Study Group on Adolescence in the 21st Century chaired by Reed
Larson and colleagues examined the expected societal and developmental
trends in the next few decades including regional studies on the transfor-
mation from childhood to adulthood (Brown et al., 2002; Larson, Wilson,
Brown, Furstenberg, & Verma, 2002). The authors note various ongoing
changes in the proximate and distal contexts of adolescents’ daily lives that
point to new developmental tasks for adolescents worldwide. However,
adolescents’ development of values in rapidly changing sociocultural con-
texts is only rarely studied (e.g., Silbereisen & Chen, 2010; Trommsdorff,
1992, 2000).
The issues of value change in adolescent development under conditions
of major social and economic changes and related questions are discussed
in this volume by several authors. For example, Chen, Wang, and Liu
(Chapter 10) focus on changing values and behavior regarding individu-
ality and group orientation of urban and rural Chinese adolescents who
live in very different socioeconomic and cultural contexts. In their discus-
sion on Japanese youth, Norasakkunkit and Uchida (Chapter 9) address
the problem of youth having withdrawn from participating in the society
due to Japan’s transition into a postindustrial economy. The authors show
that high- as compared to low-risk adolescents prefer less interdependent
values, thus departing from the predominant cultural value of interdepen-
dence in Japan. This result adds to the general goal of this volume to clarify
effects of culture on adolescent development.
Anthropological, sociological, and psychological research on values
all indicate that individual values are embedded in the broader sociocul-
tural context and differ in content and relative importance. However, more
research is needed to bridge the cultural and individual levels of values and
to clarify the conditions for the transmission and stability of values and
their association with behavior.

Religion and Youth from a Culture-Informed Perspective


Developmental theories suggest that adolescence is a period in human devel-
opment when religion and religiosity may become important. It is unclear,
however, whether and how adolescents’ religiosity, and more specifically, its
developmental conditions and outcomes, may differ across various cultural
contexts. Before I discuss these developmental questions, I present a short
overview on sociological studies.
18 Trommsdorff

Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to Religion and Culture


Sociological Studies.  Whereas religion has only recently been “discovered”
as an understudied psychological phenomenon, religion has been a major
topic of interest in social and political science since Durkheim (1975a, b)
and Max Weber (1958) (e.g., Berger, 1999; Berger, Davie, & Fokas, 2008;
Casanova, 1994; Davie, 1999; Huntington, 1996; Lenski, 1961).
Since Weber’s studies on the emergence of the Protestant ethic and the
related stimulation of capitalism in Europe, accompanied by a process of
disenchantment, several sociological studies have dealt with the “secular-
ization thesis,” assuming that advanced modernity weakens religion. In
contrast, Daniel Bell (1977) observed a “return of the sacred” in the 1970s
in the United States. Other studies also report an emergence of religious
movements; a transformation to popular religious orientations (e.g., the
Pope as a star of the mass media); and individualized, private forms of reli-
gion, including spiritualism (e.g., Woodhead, 2008). These phenomena can
be seen as “religious experimentation,” stimulating a hybrid religiosity as
a form of religious popular culture (Turner, 2011). According to Turner,
major issues for understanding religion in modern societies are related to
globalization. Fundamentalism and religious violence are two examples.
The secularization thesis is still a debated topic (e.g., Halman & Pettersson,
2006), in part due to the different definitions of religion and seculariza-
tion, which have often been criticized for having a Eurocentric bias (e.g., a
monotheistic approach to religion). Studies on secularization and religion
have also been criticized on account of their methodological shortcomings
(e.g., indicators of religiosity). Sociologists of religion have distinguished
between beliefs, practices, and affiliation. Religious practices such as church
attendance may have another meaning than subjective religious beliefs and
spirituality. Therefore, conceptual clarification is needed, and methods for
measurement should be refined. The assumption of “religious decline” can
hardly be tested empirically when the underlying concept refers to different
phenomena.
Religion and religiosity have been conceived of as a system of beliefs and
practices surrounding faith in the divine (Sasaki, Kim, & Xu, 2011). Religion
is related to organizational–institutional aspects, and religiosity is related
to personal and psychological aspects of religious beliefs. As an example,
Europeans are less inclined to go to church or to rely on church leaders than
are many Americans; however, this does not necessarily indicate a decline
in religious beliefs (Halman & Pettersson, 2006). Research by Davie (2002)
based on data from the European Values Study shows a mismatch between
religious practices and belief. The Church has lost its influence but religious
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 19

beliefs persist and have become increasingly personal, particularly among


young people. Accordingly, the reported differences between Europe and
the United States regarding changes in religiosity (Berger et al., 2008; Esmer
& Pettersson, 2007; Norris & Inglehart, 2004) need to be discussed from a
methodologically sound and culture-informed perspective.
In general, it has been observed that religion becomes less related to
institutions and instead more related to individual taste and private life in
Western countries. Large-scale comparative studies report a more complex
picture on the “religious decline,” distinguishing among various nations
(e.g., Höllinger & Haller, 2009). Accordingly, the secularization thesis has to
be revised by taking into account cultural and psychological factors. Also,
these studies did not specifically focus on adolescents.

Psychological Studies.  Wilhelm Wundt (1926) was one of the first scientists
in the psychology of religion to elaborate on the psychological, cultural, and
anthropological foundations of religion, highlighting these relations in one
of the 20 volumes of his Völkerpsychologie. Different theoretical approaches
have followed, such as the phenomenological approach of William James
(1985; religion as useful hypothesis), Sigmund Freud’s theories on religion
(1961; religion as solid illusion), attachment theory (God as attachment
figure), and humanistic psychology (for a review on the psychology of reli-
gion, see Paloutzian & Park, 2005; Wulff, 1991). The study of religion has
recently been the subject of new interest in psychological research (e.g.,
Emmons & Paloutzian, 2003; Hinde, 1999; Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, &
Gorsuch, 1996; Paloutzian & Park, 2005; Pargament, 2002; Saroglou, 2011).
Among other approaches, evolutionary (Atran, 2002, 2007), neuroscientific
(Kapogiannis et al., 2009), and cultural psychological perspectives (Belzen,
2010) have been suggested. This diversity may provide good arguments for
bridging different disciplines in the psychology of religion.
Recent studies in the psychology of religion have focused on the indi-
vidual level of religiosity (including emotions, cognitions, and behavior)
as a subjective experience (Emmons, Barrett, & Schnitker, 2008) and have
examined religion as an individual and a collective “meaning system”
(Silberman, 2005). Some approaches view religion as unique because it
provides people with ultimate meaning in life (Emmons, 1999; Emmons
et al., 2008; Pargament, 2002), whereas others regard religion as a cultural
artifact (Belzen, 2010), as a cultural byproduct among the various aspects of
cultural activity, or as an output of cognitive systems that do not exclusively
apply to religion but are shaped by the history of human evolution (Boyer &
Bergstrom, 2008; Hinde, 1999). The relation between religion and cultural
20 Trommsdorff

context is therefore seen as bidirectional in the present volume: the cultural


context shapes religion, and religion contributes to cultural and individual
differences via processes of socialization and development.
Recently, the construct of spirituality has been discussed as being dis-
tinct from religiosity and as related to psychological growth (Boyatzis,
2005). Whereas religiosity encompasses the institutional aspects of reli-
gious beliefs, spirituality encompasses the personal and transcendent
aspects (Barry, Nelson, Davarya, & Urry, 2010). Warren, Lerner, and
Phelps (2011) view adolescents’ spirituality as promoting actions that tran-
scend self-interest and focus on the benefit to others and to society. This
is in line with the theory on positive youth development and spirituality
by Lerner, Roeser, and Phelps (2008). From a culture-sensitive approach,
Hill and Pargament (2003) argue that religion and spirituality cannot be
separated in some cultures. Verma and Maria (2006) note: “Spiritual expe-
riences during adolescence are, therefore, not only closely tied to cultural
notions of adolescence, childhood, selfhood, and personhood. They are
also closely linked to notions about the nature of relations one has with
others in one’s social world, as well as the emotions one invests in these
relationships” (p. 133f).
This debated issue is dealt with in some chapters of this volume: For
example, French, Eisenberg, Purwono, and Sallquist (Chapter 6) have stud-
ied religiosity–spirituality as one combined latent construct, and Saroglou
(Chapter 17) points out that although religiosity and spirituality partly
overlap, they should be studied as separate phenomena.
In his overview on religion/religiosity, Saroglou (2011) distinguishes
between four basic psychological dimensions: beliefs (in truth), rituals/
emotions, moral rules, and affiliation (community/group). Both values and
religion can be seen as based on universal human motives. However, the
manifestation of these motives may differ among cultures, and also differ
for values and for religion.
Of special interest is the question of which conditions may contribute
to religiosity. In their cross-cultural study, Diener, Tay, and Myers (2011)
show that nations with difficult life conditions (e.g., low economic devel-
opment) score higher in religiosity. Here the question arises as to whether
results are the same for the macro- and individual levels of life conditions.
In their study on patterns of religiosity in 27 Christian societies around the
world, Höllinger and Haller (2009) report a negative correlation between
the Human Development Index and the level of religiousness of the pop-
ulation of the respective countries. This relation on the macrolevel differs
from the individual level because it does not hold for the relation between
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 21

individual (e.g., economic) life conditions and religiosity. In the same line
of reasoning, the study by Hayward and Kemmelmeier (2011) using cross-
national panel data on religiosity and economic attitudes shows stron-
ger associations of Protestantism with respect to indicators of cultural
Protestantism as compared to individual Protestant religiosity. This study,
as well as chapters in this volume (e.g., Bond, Lun, & Li [Chapter 5]; Mayer
& Trommsdorff [Chapter 15]; Schwartz [Chapter 4]), underscore the need
for multilevel modeling in this research area.
Another main issue is the function of religion. A functional approach
has been suggested from evolution theoretical perspectives indicating
that religion has contributed to the development of mankind and cultures
(e.g., Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Boyer & Bergstrom, 2008; Wilson, 2003).
More specifically, psychological researchers have studied the function of
religion for individuals and groups for interpersonal behavior, assuming
that religiosity is related to cooperation and prosocial behavior (Bremmer,
Koole, & Bushman, 2011; Henrich et al., 2010; Norenzayan & Sheriff, 2008).
Religious beliefs may encourage virtues such as prosocial behavior and pos-
itive psychological states such as hope, which, in turn, may impact mental
health and life-satisfaction (Loewenthal, 2007). Further functions of reli-
gions may include satisfying basic needs (e.g., for security, self-regulation,
autonomy, and connectedness; Baumeister, Bauer, & Lloyd, 2010; Saroglou,
2011), providing resilience (Pargament & Cummings, 2010), and increas-
ing life-satisfaction (Myers, 2008; Pollner, 1989). However, empirical results
on these assumed functions of religiosity are not consistent.
Recently, and in contrast to views on religion as beneficial, some authors
have seen religion as a risk factor, undermining health and well-being and
inducing conflict (Raiya, Pargament, & Magyar-Russell, 2010). Religion
may stimulate adolescents to engage in risk-taking behavior, violence, and
self-sacrifice. Pargament (2002) contends that religion is a unique force that
may play a beneficial role but also can be a source of distress. Culture and
individual values may influence the way religion is manifested in behavior
and adolescent development.
The often-assumed simplistic relationship between religiosity and life-
satisfaction is actually quite complex. Multiple factors may mediate and
moderate the links between religion and well-being (or health). For exam-
ple, Galen and Kloet (2011) have reported a reverse u-shaped curve for adult
samples in the United States, showing that both people who are confidently
religious and those who are atheists report higher well-being than do people
with low certainty of their belief or nonbelief in God. Furthermore, in con-
texts with difficult life conditions, religiosity is highly related to subjective
22 Trommsdorff

well-being (Diener et al., 2011). These studies underline the role of context
in the function of religiosity. In a study on Japanese individuals, Jagodzinski
(2011) reports a low level of influence of religion on life-­satisfaction due to
a general low individual sense of autonomy and control. This result is in
line with the finding by Sasaki and Kim (2010) on the impact of religion
on secondary control and social affiliation in the United States and Korea.
In Asian communities, as compared to European-American communities,
social affiliation and belonging are more highly valued than is personal
agency; therefore, religion seems to fulfill a different function in both cul-
tures – either promoting affiliation or fostering a sense of control.
The recent cross-cultural study by Sasaki et al. (2011) demonstrates a
three-way interaction of genes, culture, and religiosity predicting well-
being, thus underscoring the multilevel relationships between biological
factors, culture, religiosity, and well-being. Sasaki et al. (2011) have exam-
ined how culture (value of social affiliation) and biology (oxytocin recep-
tor gene) may interact in their impact on this association in Korean and
European-American samples. This line of research may provide a better
understanding of the harmful or beneficial effects of religion for well-
being. “Religious factors can affect mental health, sometimes for the good,
sometimes not, and some of these effects vary with the cultural context”
(Loewenthal, 2007, p. 140).
It is assumed here that the complexity of this issue cannot be reduced
when ignoring cultural factors and developmental processes. Accordingly,
more research is needed on the culture-specific effects of religion because
cultural factors may limit or support religious influence. In addition to
independent influences of contexts, one also has to understand how con-
texts combine and interact (Huston & Bentley, 2010). Therefore, this vol-
ume deals with much-neglected questions regarding the psychological
and sociological aspects of religion in adolescent development taking into
account cultural context.

Religiosity in Adolescence.  Before Erikson (1968) had published his the-


ory on identity development, empirical studies on the issue of religiosity
in adolescence were rare. As previously mentioned, individuals undergo
significant changes in physical (e.g., brain maturation), cognitive, and psy-
chosocial development during adolescence, which stimulate the search for
self definition, identity, and religious orientations. The field of sociology has
recognized adolescence as a crucial period for religious and spiritual devel-
opment as well (Desmond, Morgan, & Kikuchi, 2010; Smith & Lundquist
Denton, 2005).
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 23

A major shortcoming of empirical studies on adolescence and religion


is that these studies have usually been carried out in Western countries
and have been based on descriptive, nonrepresentative data. A few stud-
ies on youth and religion in Germany have provided empirical results on
the religious orientations of adolescents, including new forms of spiritual-
ity such as youth sects, New Age, and Occultism, and the special situation
of youth and religion in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR)
(Barz, 1992; Hurrelmann, Albert, & TNS Infratest Sozialforschung, 2006).
Representative data on this topic can be retrieved at the German Socio-
Economic Panel Study (GSOEP), the ALLBUS, or from the reports by the The
Allensbacher Institute for Public Opinion Research (Bundesministerium
für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, 2005). These studies show a great
variety of forms of religiosity, even as traditional formal institutions and
church attendance have become less prominent.
Overviews on youth and religion in the United States have shown that
the majority of adolescents report following the teachings of their religion
(King & Boyatzis, 2004). However, no simple generalizations are possi-
ble, as shown by Smith and Lundquist Denton (2005) in their extensive,
nationwide representative, and both quantitative and qualitative study on
the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers. This “National Study
on Youth and Religion” (NSYR) is a unique research project, combining
survey and interview methods. The authors demonstrate considerable vari-
ance in U.S. teenagers’ religious and spiritual practices and experiences. For
example, race, gender, and socioeconomic status are important predictors
of teenage religiosity. Regarding the developmental conditions of religios-
ity, the authors show that parents play an important role in their children’s
religious commitments. Also, social locations, key social relationships, and
organizations influence the religiosity of American teenagers. This study
gives a detailed picture on the religious and spiritual lives of American
youth. Whereas religious beliefs of American emerging adults seem to
increase, religious practices decline (see Barry et al., 2010, for a summary).
A major gap in the study of adolescents’ religiosity is the lack of research
contextualizing the findings based on U.S. college students. Only recently
has religiosity in adolescent development become a topic in sociological
and psychological research, as a result of ongoing globalization, includ-
ing immigration and religious pluralism. This has given rise to questions
of whether and how culture and changing contexts affect adolescents’ reli-
gious development (e.g., Casanova, 2007).
However, comparative research that provides theory-based representa-
tive cross-national studies on culture, values, and religiosity of adolescents
24 Trommsdorff

is rare. Therefore, a major goal of this volume is to fill this gap. Culture-
sensitive theorizing is needed to discuss the developmental conditions and
the functions of religiosity in adolescents. One focus is on the developmen-
tal conditions; another focus is on the developmental outcomes and functions
of religiosity.

Developmental Conditions for Religiosity.  The focus on developmental


conditions and descriptions of the religious and spiritual development of
adolescents points to the specific developmental tasks that adolescents face
during this period of crucial developmental transition between childhood
and adulthood. As previously indicated, a foremost task during this period
is identity development (Alsaker & Kroger, 2006; Erikson, 1968; Marcia,
1993), including religious and spiritual issues (Elkind, 1999; Waterman,
1985). Adolescents’ identity development is related to social development
(Erikson, 1968). Social relationships, in turn, are the context for experienc-
ing religious and spiritual beliefs and practices (Barry et al., 2010). From a
culture-informed perspective, and in contrast to Western societies, in some
traditional cultures, the transition to adolescence is embedded in religious
rituals and does not necessarily imply insecurity or a difficult search for
identity (Schwartz, 2007).
Several theoretical approaches to the development of religiosity have not
yet been integrated. According to Oser, Scarlett, and Bucher (2006), three
main paradigms have dominated explanations of religious development:
(1) the person maturing, (2) the person coping (functional approach), and
(3) the person perfecting. Levesque (2002) summarizes three theoretical
approaches for religious development: (1) daily activities such as prayer,
(2) the process of meaning-making, and (3) the role of the context (mainly
pa­rents). A closer look at the literature shows that several paradigms are
still competing, including the organismic or cognitive–structural paradigm,
basing on stage theories by Kohlberg (1981), Piaget (1928), and Werner
(1948); the cognitive developmental approach (Harris, 2000) and the related
cognitive anthropological approach (Johnson & Boyatzis, 2006); the affec-
tive sensitive stage approach (Good & Willoughby, 2008), which is partly
related to the approach on the achievement of identity by Erikson (1968)
and Marcia (1993); and the person-context-interaction approach (devel-
opmental systems paradigm) by Lerner (2002), which has been expanded
in a theoretical framework on positive youth development and spirituality
(Lerner et al., 2008).
However, all these approaches neglect the role of culture and values in
adolescent religious development; this volume attempts to fill the gap. For
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 25

example, Kornadt (Chapter 2) discusses the culture-specific role of ado-


lescents from a historical and psychological perspective, clarifying the
motivational components in the development of religiosity. Rothbaum
et al. (Chapter 3) elaborate culture-specific aspects of the development of
self-awareness in relation to religiosity. The authors perceive of spirituality
as coping with existential concerns engendered by self-awareness and per-
ceived threats to the self.

Socialization Conditions.  In terms of socialization conditions for reli-


gious development, parents are the primary socializing agents, although
other adults, peers, media, and institutions serve as socializing agents as
well (for an overview regarding the socialization of emerging adults, see
Barry et al., 2010). There is substantial empirical evidence that the quality
of a youth’s relationship with his or her parents predicts the effectiveness of
parental religious socialization (Ream & Savin-Williams, 2003). This find-
ing is in line with studies that indicate a correlation between adolescents’
secure attachment and their similarity to their parents’ religiosity (for an
overview, see Granqvist, Chapter 14 in in this volume). However, the cul-
tural context has to be taken into account as well because basic factors in
socialization conditions are cultural variables (Whiting & Whiting, 1975),
including self- and world-views and religious beliefs (Trommsdorff, 2012).
In his classical anthropological cross-cultural study on the associations
between socialization practices and religious beliefs, Lambert (1992) used
ethnographic material from 62 traditional cultures. He showed that in these
cultures, a general belief in the relative malevolence (in contrast to benev-
olence) of supernatural beings (gods or spirits) was related to painful and
strict socialization procedures by socialization agents: children experienced
early, harsh discipline and were rewarded for self-reliance and indepen-
dence. In contrast, in cultures where a belief in benevolent gods was insti-
tutionalized, children experienced less punishment and less rigid training;
they were socialized for a more supportive world. This study underlines the
impact of culture-specific world-views on socialization practices.
Socialization experiences in the family have been reported as the most
powerful factor influencing religious development in industrialized coun-
tries (Boyatzis, Dollahite, & Marks, 2006). Pankhurst and Houseknecht
(2000) argue that the relationship between family and religiosity has been
neglected in past research and assert the importance of family influence
on religious development in times of social change. In contrast, Desmond
et al. (2010) have demonstrated in their representative longitudinal study
on American youth (National Youth Survey) that family structure may
26 Trommsdorff

only influence religious service attendance and not affect private religious
beliefs. Taking into account the role of the cultural context, Kelley and De
Graaf (1997) showed that the impact of parents’ religiosity is moderated by
the national religious context. This is an important result in line with con-
clusions from some chapters in this volume (e.g., Mayer & Trommsdorff,
Chapter 15).
In their longitudinal study of intergenerational transmission of religion,
Bengtson, Copen, Putney, and Silverstein (2008) demonstrated that grand-
parents and parents are independent and joint agents of religious socializa-
tion. Knafo et al. (Chapter 16 in this volume) show that direct influence
occurs through parental values and practices. The mother influences ado-
lescents’ religious development most strongly, followed by the church, the
father, and friends (Hunsberger, 1995; Hunsberger & Brown, 1984). Family
values (Sabatier, Mayer, Friedlmeier, Lubiewska, & Trommsdorff, 2011)
and, moreover, the parent–child relationship have been identified both as
direct influences and as mediating factors in the development of adoles-
cents’ religiosity (Granqvist, 2002; Granqvist & Dickie, 2006).
Results from chapters in this volume are in line with this conclusion. For
example, Granqvist (Chapter 14) has shown that the quality of parent–child
relationships is related to adolescents’ secure or insecure attachment pat-
terns, which in turn may influence one’s relation to God or the divine as an
attachment figure (see also Kirkpatrick, 1995). This idea has been further
elaborated by Rothbaum et al. (Chapter 3) in their theoretical approach on
self-awareness and religiosity.
An important theoretical and empirical question that remains open is:
can religiosity be seen as a specific value system that is transmitted through
socialization processes in the family and other contexts, similarly to other
values, or is religiosity a unique phenomenon that only partly resembles or
overlaps with values? In the latter case, different processes of socialization
and transmission may be relevant. Therefore, a question for further research
is whether the theoretical and empirical approaches to the transmission of
values (see Schönpflug, 2009) are applicable to the transmission and the
development of religiosity as well. Most research on the religiosity of ado-
lescents is not based on longitudinal data, and thus lacks empirical evidence
on the transmission process. Reported similarities between parents and
their adolescent children are not necessarily a valid indicator of “successful”
socialization processes, as studies on parent–child value congruence have
shown (see Knafo et al., Chapter 16 in this volume; Trommsdorff, 2009a).
Culture-informed empirical approaches to the socialization conditions
of religiosity are rare. An exception is the research by the Study Group on
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 27

Adolescence in the 21st Century, chaired by Reed Larson and colleagues


(Brown et al., 2002; Larson et al., 2002). In addition, few studies have inves-
tigated the socialization of religiosity in minority groups and migrant youth.
Here, the question of transmission of religiosity in a changing cultural con-
text is of special interest. Phinney (2008) argues that little attention has been
given to actual interactions in the family, and further stresses that both
acculturative and developmental changes should be taken into account.
Accordingly, there is a need for culture-informed research on the social-
ization of religion that focuses both on the study of religious beliefs and
practices in different cultures and on their specific impact on adolescent
religious development. Therefore, the present volume attempts to address
these questions. For example, Granqvist (Chapter 14) elaborates on social-
ization conditions for religiosity in adolescent development in an attach-
ment theoretical framework. Socialization in the family is discussed by
several authors referring to different cultural contexts (e.g., Knafo et al.
[Chapter 16]; Mayer & Trommsdorff [Chapter 15]; Rubin et al. [Chapter 8]).
Since the family is only one among many agents of socialization, Mayer and
Trommsdorff (Chapter 15) discuss the question of normativity of religios-
ity as a cultural factor (in addition to economic development and cultural
values) influencing adolescents’ religious development. Further, several
chapters provide culturally sensitive accounts of socialization in the peer
group (Chen et al. [Chapter 10]; French et al. [Chapter 6]; Larson, Jensen,
Kang, Griffith, & Rompala [Chapter 7]); and Mishra (Chapter 18) describes
Indian youths’ socialization in school, taking into account the cultural con-
text and the related traditional Hindu values.

Religiosity and Developmental Outcomes.  Researchers have also focused


on the development of religiosity by studying its psychological processes
and developmental outcomes. For example, the relation between religiosity
and moral development has been of interest in some research. According
to Kohlberg (1981), moral development occurs rather independently from
religious development, but religious structures support morality. In con-
trast, Nunner-Winkler (1995) concluded that religious orientation and
moral commitment are not necessarily related to each other. Whereas these
studies have been carried out in Western societies, Bucher, Oser, and Reich
(2007) discussed the applicability of their method (based on Kohlberg’s
dilemma situations) to Buddhist, Hindu, and African children and adoles-
cents and reported a trend of age-related development in moral judgments.
However, in this study, behavioral indicators for religiosity and relations to
values and behavior were largely missing.
28 Trommsdorff

Cultural psychological studies focusing on associations between adoles-


cents’ religious orientation and behavior-relevant values such as the value
of children and the family provide more specific information (e.g., Brisset,
Sabatier, & Trommsdorff, 2008, July; Mayer & Trommsdorff, Chapter 15
in this volume; Sabatier et al., 2011). In highly religious populations where
traditional family structures are still prevalent, like in Israel, the value of
children is very high due to religious reasons. Thus, religious orientations
may influence fertility decisions, which in turn have sociodemographic
implications in certain cultures (Suckow, 2005). Pearce and Thornton
(2007) explored the relations between religion and various family ideolo-
gies, underlining the role of religion for family values, desirable family
behaviors, and career planning in early adulthood.
Religiosity is often assumed to be related to positive developmental out-
comes such as prosocial development. Relations between spirituality, religion,
and positive developmental outcomes such as civic engagement have been
discussed by Lerner et al. (2008) and, more recently, by Warren et al. (2011).
The search for identity may motivate adolescents to make valued contribu-
tions to self, family, and civil society (Warren et al., 2011). Empirical stud-
ies on adolescents’ involvement in religious institutions have shown positive
associations with community service (Youniss, McLellan, & Yates, 1999),
self-regulation (McCullough & Willoughby, 2009), health outcomes (Miller
& Thoresen, 2003; Plante & Sherman, 2001), and healthy lifestyles (Powell,
Shahabi, & Thorensen, 2003). In line with these studies, Johnson (2008) dis-
cussed the association between religion and positive development. He sug-
gested that religion may increase well-being, meaning in life, and educational
attainment thus contributing to capacities which help individuals` positive
development. Other empirical results on the relationship between adolescents’
life-satisfaction and religiosity are inconsistent and point to the importance of
cultural aspects (e.g., Sabatier et al., 2011; Sasaki et al., 2011). A major flaw in
these studies is the neglect of cultural variables and the neglect of longitudinal
studies examining causal relations between religiosity and positive develop-
ment. A very rare exception is the study by Eisenberg et al. (2011) investigat-
ing the trajectories of religious coping from adolescence into early adulthood.
The authors could show for an Italian Catholic sample that adolescents high in
stable religious coping showed more prosocial behavior at three ages as com-
pared to adolescents who were undergoing changes in their religious coping.
To summarize, whether or not adolescents’ religiosity is related to pos-
itive developmental outcomes remains a debated issue (Pargament, 2002).
Empirical findings to date cannot be generalized because cultural factors
and values have been neglected. Therefore, several chapters in this volume
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 29

discuss whether and how religious beliefs are associated with positive youth
development taking into account the cultural context.
Several authors of this volume (e.g., Bond et al.; Granquist; Kornadt;
Rothbaum et al.) call attention to the function of religiosity in fulfilling basic
human needs (e.g., for security, belonging). However, under certain condi-
tions, religiosity may result in distress and antisocial behavior as Kornadt
(Chapter 2) argues. In line with attachment theory, Granqvist (Chapter 14)
shows that religiosity may also be related to insecure attachment and neg-
ative developmental outcomes. A possibly positive developmental out-
come may be seen in the culture-specific associations between religiosity
and future orientations for Israeli Palestinian Muslim girls (see Seginer &
Mahajna, Chapter 11). However, a somewhat different view is suggested by
Pearce and Hardie (Chapter 12) regarding the gender-specific career expec-
tations for religious female adolescents from the United States.
Saroglou (Chapter 17) discusses whether religiosity can predict posi-
tive developmental outcomes from an individual difference perspective,
thus arriving at different implications of religiosity for personality stability
versus personal growth. Consequently, he discusses the possibly adaptive
function of religious doubt in adolescence.
French et al. (Chapter 6) report positive outcomes (e.g., adjustment and
social competence) of religiosity for Indonesian Muslim adolescents in
West Java, a highly homogenous culture. This result was expected because
of parents’ authoritative parenting style and adolescents’ involvement with
religious peers.
The chapter by Bond, Lun, and Li (Chapter 5) is a valuable example of how
to identify conditions for positive and negative functions of religiosity in dif-
ferent cultures. The authors related macro- and microlevels in order to exam-
ine the associations between religiosity and well-being and happiness. Taking
into account sociocultural factors, the authors analyzed data from the World
Values Survey to explore the impact of the national context on the strength
of the relations between both personality (values) and social factors (reli-
gious engagement) and life-satisfaction. Different results for life-satisfaction
occurred depending on the (national or individual) level of analyses. These
results underline the role of normativity (social support) in religious values
and practices for positive developmental outcomes such as life-satisfaction.

Conclusions
The chapters of this volume clearly show that culture, values, and religion
have significant impacts on youth development. These studies therefore
30 Trommsdorff

have several implications for a developmental approach to adolescence.


Although values and religiosity are relevant factors in youth development,
the respective developmental conditions and functions differ depending on
the cultural context. In addition to universal structures and functions of
values and religion, certain culture-specificities (e.g., socioeconomic fac-
tors, cultural models of agency) have been observed. On the one hand,
universalities in value dimensions and religious orientations have been
empirically demonstrated in cross-cultural comparisons. On the other
hand, cultural differences in the dimensions and functions of value orien-
tations and religiosity have been reported. How values and religiosity are
related to developmental outcomes depend on the cultural context.
An issue for future research is to analyze the role of biological factors
and their assumed interactions with the functions of values and religiosity
in the given cultural context. However, this topic was beyond the scope of
the present volume.
Further research is also needed on the role of values and religion for
adolescent development across cultures in changing societies. This volume
has contributed to a better understanding of the culture-specific transmis-
sion processes of values and religiosity and their effects on adolescents’
development. However, more longitudinal studies are needed. Respective
studies should try to bridge the developmental and the ecological, culture-
informed perspectives by also taking into account changing socioeconomic
contexts. However, methodological shortcomings have to be dealt with first.
For example, the conceptualization and measurement of values and religi-
osity still pose several problems related to issues of the validity of indicators
(which may depend on the cultural context and the developmental time),
issues of dimensions (the ranking-rating controversy), verbal and behav-
ioral methods, and ethnocentric measurement (e.g., Jagodzinski, 2004 for
values; Saroglou, 2011 for religiosity). Furthermore, a solid methodologi-
cal basis such as the multilevel method is necessary to disentangle cultural
and individual values (van de Vijver et al., 2008). As this volume makes
clear, this is a necessary methodology because phenomena on the cultural
level cannot necessarily be observed on the individual level (e.g., see Bond
et al. [Chapter 5] and Mayer & Trommsdorff [Chapter 15] in this volume).
A major gap is the lack of longitudinal data and the scarcity of culture-
informed approaches.
The development of values and religiosity is an important issue because
values and religion can shape cultural and societal conditions whereas the
function of values and religion for individual behavior is simultaneously
influenced by cultural factors. Here, questions regarding the relations
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 31

between cultural models of agency, values, and religion arise. These phe-
nomena may partly overlap but differ in their impact on individual develop-
ment. Their overlap may consist of providing a self- and world-view based
on a meaning system including goals and control beliefs necessary for ado-
lescent development. Although Johnson, Hill, and Cohen (2011) have sug-
gested conceiving of culture and religion as world-views, our suggestion
here is to go a step further by understanding all three phenomena – cultural
models of agency, values, and religion – as interrelated self- and world-views
that influence adolescent development (Trommsdorff, 2012). This approach
could provide a fruitful theoretical basis for future research in this area, as
has been elaborated in this volume, because it takes into account the cul-
tural context of values and religion in adolescent development.
In this volume, Kornadt (Chapter 2) discusses religion as a world-view
guiding the development of adolescents’ values, identity, and behavior. He
suggests a historical and motivational approach to religiosity, assuming
basic needs for security and belonging. In Chapter 2, he also describes rela-
tions between values and religion in different cultural contexts, which may
induce pro- and antisocial behavior. Rothbaum et al. (Chapter 3) focus on
implications in the increasing development of self-awareness, and the cul-
tural differences in the key components. The authors conceive of spirituality
as a way of coping with existential concerns. More specifically, Granqvist
(Chapter 14) discusses the religious development of adolescents and their
respective self- and world-views in an attachment theoretical framework,
referring to the socialization conditions and functions of secure and inse-
cure attachment. Accordingly, a major theoretical contribution of this vol-
ume is its focus on cultural values and religiosity in the development and
function of self- and world-views.
Further, ongoing globalization, including immigration and religious
pluralism (Casanova, 2007), gives rise to questions of whether and how
this societal change affects adolescents’ development. These questions have
been dealt with in this volume (e.g., by Chen et al. [Chapter 10]; Knafo
et al. [Chapter 16]; Larson et al. [Chapter 7]; Nauck & Steinbach [Chapter
13]; Norasakkunkit & Uchida [Chapter 9]; Pearce & Hardie [Chapter 12];
Saroglou [Chapter 17]; Seginer & Mahajna [Chapter 11]) and have stimu-
lated areas for future research.
In addition, the social and psychological conditions for nonreligios-
ity (see Atran & Norenzayan, 2004) and for conversion to new religious
movements (Streib, Hood, Keller, Csöff, & Silver, 2009 view conversion
as “deconversion”) need more clarification, as the chapters by Knafo et al.
(Chapter 16) and Saroglou (Chapter 17) indicate. Studies on the conditions
32 Trommsdorff

for religious fundamentalism in adolescence also need more clarification


as Chapter 2 by Kornadt points out. How do fundamentalist movements
succeed in attracting certain youth? Can the criterion of fundamentalism,
which Herriot (2009) views as being in opposition to modernity, be gener-
ally regarded as a motivating force?
To summarize, several questions arise from the past studies on adoles-
cence, values, and religion that need to be discussed from both develop-
mental and culture-informed perspectives, thus overcoming the dominant
Western individualistic focus. More exchange between sociological, anthro-
pological, and psychological approaches will be fruitful for addressing the
open questions that this volume shows to be relevant. These questions con-
cern relations between values and religiosity and their respective changes
during development, the conditions and functions of values and religiosity
for both positive and negative developmental outcomes, and the role of cul-
tural factors in these processes. This volume addresses several major gaps in
the literature and contributes to a clarification of some of these questions by
dealing with cultural, social, and psychological aspects of adolescent devel-
opment focusing on mutual relations between religiosity and value orien-
tations of youth from a cross-cultural perspective. We thereby emphasize
the need to build a theoretical framework on adolescent development that
bridges approaches in social science and culture-sensitive developmental
psychology.

Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a grant from the German Research
Foundation (DFG GZ, TR 169/14–2) as part of the project
“Developmental Conditions of Intentionality and its Limits” and as part
of the Interdisciplinary Research Center “Limits of Intentionality” at the
University of Konstanz. I thank Boris Mayer for his comments to an earlier
version of this chapter, Jeanette Ziehm for editing the references, and Holly
Bunje for language editing.

References

Albert, I. (2007). Intergenerationale Transmission von Werten in Deutschland und


Frankreich [Intergenerational transmission of values in Germany and France].
Lengerich, Germany: Pabst Science.
Albert, I., Trommsdorff, G., & Sabatier, C. (2011). Patterns of relationship regulation:
German and French adolescents’ perceptions with regard to their mothers. Family
Science, 2, 58–67.
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 33

Allport, G. W., & Vernon, P. E. (1931). A study of values. Boston, MA: Houghton
Mifflin.
Alsaker, F. D., & Kroger, J. (2006). Self and identity. In S. Jackson & L. Goossens (Eds.),
Handbook of adolescent development: European perspectives (pp. 90–117). Hove:
Psychology Press.
Alsaker, F. D., & Olweus, D. (1992). Stability of global self-evaluations in early ado-
lescence: A cohort longitudinal study. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 2,
123–145.
Arnett, J. J. (2006). Emerging adulthood. The winding road from the late teens through the
twenties. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  (2011). Bridging cultural and developmental psychology: New syntheses in theory,
research, and policy. In L. A. Jensen (Ed.), Emerging adulthood(s): The cultural psy-
chology of a new life stage (pp. 255–275). New York: Oxford University Press.
  (Ed.). (2012). Adolescent psychology around the world. New York: Psychology Press.
Arnold, F., Bulatao, R. A., Buripakdi, C., Chung, B. J., Fawcett, J. T., Iritani, T., ... Wu,
T. S. (1975). The value of children: A cross-national study. Vol. 1. Introduction and
comparative analysis. Honolulu: East-West Population Institute.
Atran, S. (Ed.). (2002). In gods we trust. The evolutionary landscape of religion. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Atran, S. (2007). The nature of belief. Science, 317, 456.
Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Why minds create gods: Devotion, deception, death,
and arational decision making. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 713–770.
Azmitia, M., Syed, M., & Radmacher, K. (2008). On the intersection of personal and
social identities: Introduction and evidence from a longitudinal study of emerging
adults. New Directions for Child & Adolescent Development, 120, 1–16.
Baltes, P. B., & Brim, O. G. (Eds.). (1980). Life-span development and behavior. Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bardi, A., & Schwartz, S. H. (2003). Values and behavior: Strength and structure of rela-
tions. Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin, 29, 1207–1220.
Barry, C. M., Nelson, L., Davarya, S., & Urry, S. (2010). Religiosity and spirituality dur-
ing the transition to adulthood. International Journal of Behavioral Development,
34, 311–324.
Barz, H. (Ed.). (1992). Religion ohne Institutionen? Eine Bilanz der sozialwissenschaftli-
chen Jugendforschung. Teil 1 des Forschungsbericht “Jugend und Religion” im
Auftrag der Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Evangelischen Jugend in der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland (aej) [Religion without institutions? A balance of the social science
youth research. First part of the research report “youth and religion” on behalf
of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Evangelischen Jugend in der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland]. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.
Baumeister, R. F., Bauer, I. M., & Lloyd, S. A. (2010). Choice, free will, and religion.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2, 67–82.
Bell, D. (1977). The return of the sacred? The argument of the future of religion. British
Journal of Sociology, 28, 419–451.
Belzen, J. A. (2010). Towards cultural psychology of religion: Principles, approaches, appli-
cations. New York: Springer Science + Business Media.
Bengtson, V. L. (1975). Generation and family effects in value socialization. American
Sociological Review, 40, 358–371.
34 Trommsdorff

Bengtson, V. L., Copen, C. E., Putney, N. M., & Silverstein, M. (2008). Religion and
intergenerational transmission over time. In K. W. Schaie & R. P. Abeles (Eds.),
Social structures and aging individuals: Continuing challenges (pp. 305–333). New
York: Springer.
Berger, P., Davie, G., & Fokas, E. (2008). Religious America, secular Europe? A theme and
variations. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Berger, P. L. (Ed.). (1999). The desecularization of the world: Resurgent religion and world
politics. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Bilsky, W., Janik, M., & Schwartz, S. H. (2011). The structural organization of human
values – Evidence from three rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS). Journal
of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 759–776.
Boehnke, K., Hadjar, A., & Baier, D. (2009). Value transmission and zeitgeist revisited.
In U. Schönpflug (Ed.), Cultural transmission. Psychological, developmental, social,
and methodological aspects. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Boehnke, K., & Welzel, C. (2006). Wertetransmission und Wertewandel: Eine explorative
Drei-Generationen-Studie [Value transmission and value change: An exploratory
three-generation study]. Zeitschrift für Soziologie der Erziehung und Sozialisation,
26, 341–360.
Bond, M. H., Leung, K., Au, A., Tong, K. K., & Chemonges-Nielson, Z. (2004).
Combining social axioms with values in predicting social behaviors. European
Journal of Personality, 18, 177–191.
Boyatzis, C. J. (2005). Religious and spiritual development in childhood. In R. F.
Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spiritual-
ity (pp. 123–143). New York: The Guilford Press.
Boyatzis, C. J., Dollahite, D. C., & Marks, L. D. (2006). The family as a context for reli-
gious and spiritual development in children and youth. In E. C. Roehlkepartain,
P. E. King, L. Wagener, & P. L. Benson (Eds.), The handbook of spiritual development
in childhood and adolescence (pp. 297–309). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Boyer, P., & Bergstrom, B. (2008). Evolutionary perspectives on religion. Annual Review
of Anthropology, 37, 111–130.
Bremmer, R. H., Koole, S. L., & Bushman, B. J. (2011). “Pray for those who mistreat
you”: Effects of prayer on anger and aggression. Personality and Social Psychological
Bulletin, 37, 830–837.
Brisset, C., Sabatier, C., & Trommsdorff, G. (2008, July). Values, family relationships, and
religiosity in two European countries: France and Germany. In G. Trommsdorff &
C. Kagitcibasi (Chairs), Cultural patterns of family relationships and value orien-
tations. Symposium conducted at the 19th International Congress of Psychology
(ICP), Berlin, Germany.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature
and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brown, B. B., Larson, R. W., & Saraswathi, T. S. (Eds.). (2002). The world’s youth:
Adolescence in eight regions of the globe. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bubeck, M., & Bilsky, W. (2004). Value structure at an early age. Swiss Journal of
Psychology, 63, 31–41.
Bucher, A. A., Oser, F., & Reich, K. H. (2007). Religiosität und Spiritualität im Kulturvergleich
[Religiosity and spirituality in cross-cultural comparison]. In G. Trommsdorff &
H.-J. Kornadt (Eds.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie: Themenbereich C. Theorie und
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 35

Forschung: Serie VII. Kulturvergleichende Psychologie: Band 1: Theorien und Methoden


der kulturvergleichenden Psychologie (pp. 677–702). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.
Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend (2005). 12. Kinder und
Jugendbericht [12th report of children and adolescents]. Berlin: Bundesministerium
für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend.
Casanova, J. (1994). Public religions in the modern world. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
  (2007). Immigration and the new religious pluralism: A European Union/United
States comparison. In T. Banchoff (Ed.), Democracy and the new religious pluralism
(pp. 59–83). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chen, X. (2012). Culture, peer interaction, and socioemotional development. Child
Development Perspectives, 6, 27–34. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
doi/10.1111/j.1750–8606.2011.00187.x/pdf
Chen, X., & French, D. C. (2008). Children’s social competence in cultural context.
Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 591–616.
Cole, M., & Packer, M. (2011). Culture in development. In M. H. Bornstein & M. E.
Lamb (Eds.), Developmental science: An advanced textbook (6th ed., pp. 51–108).
New York: Psychology Press.
Coleman, J. C. (2011). The nature of adolescence (4th ed.). New York: Psychology Press.
D’Andrade, R. (2008). A study of personal and cultural values. American, Japanese, and
Vietnamese. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Davidov, E., Schmidt, P., & Billiet, J. (Eds.). (2011). Cross-cultural analysis: Methods and
­applications. New York: Routledge.
Davie, G. (1999). Europe: The exception that proves the rule? In P. L. Berger (Ed.), The
desecularization of the world: Resurgent religion and world politics (pp. 65–84).
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
  (2002). Europe: The exceptional case. Parameters of faith in the modern world. London:
Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd.
Desmond, S. A., Morgan, K. H., & Kikuchi, G. (2010). Religious development: How (and
why) does religiosity change from adolescence to young adulthood? Sociological
Perspectives, 53, 247–270.
Diener, E., Tay, L., & Myers, D. G. (2011). The religion paradox: If religion makes people
happy, why are so many dropping out? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
101, 1278–1290.
Durkheim, E. (1975a). Religion in sociological perspective: Essays in the empirical study of
religion. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
  (1975b). On religion. London: Routledge & Paul.
  (1981). Die elementaren Formen des religiösen Lebens [The elementary forms of reli-
gious life]. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Eisenberg, N., Castellani, V., Panerai, L., Eggum, N. D., Cohen, A. B., Pastorelli, C., &
Caprara, G. V. (2011). Trajectories of religious coping from adolescence into early
adulthood: Their form and relations to externalizing problems and prosocial
behavior. Journal of Personality, 79, 841–873.
Elder, G. H., & Shanahan, M. J. (2006). The life course and human development. In R. M.
Lerner (Ed.), Theoretical models of human development (6 ed., Vol. 1: The handbook
of child psychology, pp. 665–715). New York: Wiley.
Elder-Vass, D. (2010). The emergence of culture. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und
Sozialpsychologie, 50, 351–363.
36 Trommsdorff

Elkind, D. (1999). Religious development in adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 22,


291–295.
Emmons, R. A. (1999). The psychology of ultimate concerns: Motivation and spirituality
in personality. New York: Guilford.
Emmons, R. A., Barrett, J. L., & Schnitker, S. A. (2008). Personality and the capacity for
religious and spiritual experience. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.),
Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 634–653). New York: Guilford.
Emmons, R. A., & Paloutzian, R. F. (2003). The psychology of religion. Annual Review
of Psychology, 54, 377–402.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis: New York: Norton.
Esmer, Y., & Pettersson, T. (Eds.). (2007). Measuring and mapping cultures: 25 years of
comparative value surveys (Vol. 104). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Flanagan, C. A. (2004). Volunteerism, leadership, political socialization, and civic
engagement. In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psy-
chology (pp. 721–746). New York: Wiley.
Freud, S. (1961). The future of an illusion. New York: Norton.
Friedlmeier, M., & Trommsdorff, G. (2011). Are mother–child similarities in value
orientations related to mothers’ parenting? A comparative study of American
and Romanian families with adolescents. The European Journal of Developmental
Psychology, 8, 661–680.
Galen, L. W., & Kloet, J. D. (2011). Mental well-being in the religious and the non–reli-
gious: Evidence for a curvilinear relationship. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture,
14, 673–689.
Gelfand, M. J., Raver, J. L., Nishii, L., Leslie, L. A., Lun, J, Lim, B. C., … Yamaguchi, S.
(2011). Differences between tight and loose cultures: A 33–nation study. Science,
332, 1100–1104.
Good, M., & Willoughby, T. (2008). Adolescence as a sensitive period for spiritual devel-
opment. Child Development Perspectives, 2, 32–37.
Graber, J. A., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (1996). Transitions and turning points: Navigating
the passage from childhood through adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 32,
768–776.
Granqvist, P. (2002). Attachment and religiosity in adolescence: Cross-sectional and lon-
gitudinal evaluations. Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin, 28, 260–270.
Granqvist, P., & Dickie, J. (2006). Attachment and spiritual development in childhood
and adolescence. In E. C. Roehlkepartain, P. E. King, L. Wagener, & P. Benson (Eds.),
The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence (pp. 197–210).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Greenfield, P. M. (2010). Particular forms of independence and interdependence are
adapted to particular kinds of sociodemographic environment: Commentary on
“Independence and interdependence in children’s developmental experiences.”
Child Development Perspectives, 4, 37–39.
Grob, A. (1998). Adolescents’ subjective well–being in fourteen cultural contexts. In
J. E. Nurmi (Ed.), Adolescents, cultures and conflicts  – Growing up in contempo-
rary Europe. European advances in adolescent research (pp. 199–224). New York:
Garland.
Grob, A., Weisheit, W., & Gomez, V. (2009). The intergenerational transmission of xeno-
phobia and rightism in East Germany. In U. Schönpflug (Ed.), Cultural transmission.
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 37

Psychological, developmental, social, and methodological aspects (pp. 338–369). New


York: Cambridge University Press.
Grusec, J. E., & Goodnow, J. J. (1994). Impact of parental discipline methods on the
child’s internalization of values: A reconceptualization of current points of view.
Developmental Psychology, 30, 4–19.
Halman, L., & Pettersson, T. (2006). A decline of religious values? In P. Ester, M. Braun,
& P. Mohler (Eds.), Globalization, value change and generation (pp. 31–60). Leiden,
The Netherlands: Brill.
Harris, P. L. (2000). On not falling down to earth. Children’s metaphysical questions.
In K. S. Rosengren, C. N. Johnson, & P. L. Harris (Eds.), Imagining the impossible.
Magical, scientific and religious thinking in children (pp. 157–178). Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
Hayward, R. D., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2011). Weber revisited: A cross-national analysis
of religiosity, religious culture, and economic attitudes. Journal of Cross-Cultural
Psychology, 42, 1406–1420.
Henrich, J., Ensminger, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., … Ziker, J.
(2010). Markets, religion, community size, and the evolution of fairness and pun-
ishment. Science, 327, 1480–1484.
Herriot, P. (2009). Religious fundamentalism. Global, local and personal. New York:
Routledge.
Hill, P. C., & Pargament, K. I. (2003). Advances in the conceptualization and mea-
surement of religion and spirituality: Implications for physical and mental health
research. American Psychologist, 58, 64–74.
Hinde, R. A. (1999). Why gods persist: A scientific approach to religion. London:
Routledge.
Hoffman, L. W., & Hoffman, M. L. (1973). The value of children to parents. In J. T.
Fawcett (Ed.), Psychological perspectives on population (pp. 19–76). New York: Basic
Books.
Hofstede, G. H. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work–related
values. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
  (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organiza-
tions across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Höllinger, F., & Haller, M. (2009). Decline or persistence of religion? Trends in religi-
osity among Christian societies around the world. In M. Haller, R. Jowell, & T. W.
Smith (Eds.), The international social survey programme, 1984–2009. Charting the
globe (pp. 281–301). London: Routledge.
Hood, R. W. J., Spilka, B., Hunsberger, B., & Gorsuch, R. (1996). Religious socialization
and thought in adolescence and young adulthood. In R. W. J. Hood, B. Spilka, B.
Hunsberger, & R. Gorsuch (Eds.), The psychology of religion. An empirical approach
(pp. 72–110). New York: Guilford.
Hunsberger, B. (1995). Religion and prejudice: The role of religious fundamentalism,
quest, and right–wing authoritarianism. Journal of Social Issues, 51, 113–129.
Hunsberger, B., & Brown, L. B. (1984). Religious socialization, apostasy, and the
impact of family background. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 23,
239–251.
Huntington, S. P. (Ed.). (1996). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order.
New York: Simon and Schuster.
38 Trommsdorff

Hurrelmann, K., Albert, M., & TNS Infratest Sozialforschung (2006). 15. Shell–
Jugendstudie: Jugend 2006. Eine pragmatische Generation unter Druck [15th Shell–
youth study: Youth 2006. A pragmatic generation under pressure]. Frankfurt:
Fischer–Taschenbuch–Verlag.
Huston, A. C., & Bentley, A. C. (2010). Human development in societal context. Annual
Review of Psychology, 61, 411–437.
Inglehart, R. (1977). The silent revolution: Changing values and political styles among
Western publics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  (1997). Modernization and postmodernization: Cultural, economic and political change
in 43 societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  (2007). Mapping global values. In Y. Esmer & T. Pettersson (Eds.), Measuring and
mapping cultures: 25 years of comparative value surveys (pp. 11–32). Leiden, The
Netherlands: Brill.
Inglehart, R., & Baker, W. E. (2000). Modernization, cultural change, and the persistence
of traditional values. American Sociological Review, 65, 19–51.
Inglehart, R., Basañez, M., & Moreno, A. (1998). Human values and beliefs – A cross-
cultural sourcebook: Political, religious, sexual, and economic norms in 43 ­societies.
Findings from the 1990–1993 World Values Survey. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press.
Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (Eds.). (2005). Modernization, cultural change and democracy.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jagodzinski, W. (2004). Methodological problems of value research. In H. Vinken, J.
Soeters, & P. Ester (Eds.), Comparing cultures. Dimensions of culture in a compara-
tive perspective (pp. 97–121). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
  (2011). Autonomy, religiosity and national identification as determinants of life
satisfaction: A theoretical and empirical model and its application to Japan.
Contemporary Japan, 23, 93–127.
Jahoda, G. (2007). Kulturkonzepte im Wandel [Changing conceptions of culture]. In G.
Trommsdorff & H.-J. Kornadt (Eds.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie: Themenbereich
C. Theorie und Forschung: Serie VII. Kulturvergleichende Psychologie: Band 1.
Theorien und Methoden in der kulturvergleichenden und kulturpsychologischen
Forschung (pp. 3–24). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.
James, W. (1985). The varieties of religious experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Johnson, B. R. (2008). A tale of two religious effects: Evidence for the protective and
prosocial impact of organic religion. In K. Kovner Kline (Ed.), Authoritative com-
munities: The scientific case for nurturing the whole child (pp. 187–225). New York:
Springer.
Johnson, C. N., & Boyatzis, C. J. (2006). Cognitive–cultural foundations of spiritual
development. In E. C. Roehlkepartain, P. Ebstyne King, L. Wagener, & P. Benson
(Eds.), The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence (pp.
211–223). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Johnson, K. A., Hill, E. D., & Cohen, A. B. (2011). Integrating the study of culture and
religion: Toward a psychology of worldview. Social and Personality Psychology
Compass, 5, 137–152.
Jowell, R., Kaase, M., Fitzgerald, R., & Eva, G. (2007). The European Social Survey as
a measurement model. In R. Jowell, C. Roberts, R. Fitzgerald, & G. Eva (Eds.),
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 39

Measuring attitudes cross-nationally: Lessons from the European Social Survey (pp.
1–31). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Kagitcibasi, C. (1973). Psychological aspects of modernization in Turkey. Journal of
Cross Cultural Psychology, 4, 157–174.
  (2006). Theoretical perspectives on family change. In J. Georgas, J. W. Berry, F. J. R.
van de Vijver, C. Kagitcibasi, & Y. H. Poortinga (Eds.), Families across cultures: A
30–nation psychological study (pp. 72–89). New York: Cambridge University Press.
  (2007). Family, self, and human development across cultures: Theory and applications
(2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kapogiannis, D., Barbey, A. K., Su, M., Zamboni, G., Krueger, F., & Grafman, J. (2009).
Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief. PNAS Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106, 4876–4881.
Kelley, J., & De Graaf, N. D. (1997). National context, parental socialization, and reli-
gious belief: Results from 15 nations. American Sociological Review, 62, 639–659.
King, P. E., & Boyatzis, C. J. (2004). Exploring adolescent spiritual and religious devel-
opment: Current and future theoretical and empirical perspectives. Applied
Developmental Science, 8, 2–6.
King, P. E., & Roeser, R. W. (2009). Religion and spirituality in adolescent development.
In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psychology, Vol 1:
Individual bases of adolescent development (pp. 435–478). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1995). Attachment theory and religious experience. In I. R. W. Hood
(Ed.), Handbook of religious experience (pp. 446–475). Birmingham, AL: Religious
Education Press.
Kitayama, S., & Imada, T. (2010). Implicit independence and interdependence: A cul-
tural task analysis. In B. Mesquita, L. F. Barrett, & E. R. Smith (Eds.), The mind in
context. (pp. 174–200). New York: Guilford.
Kluckhohn, C. K., & Strodtbeck, F. L. (1961). Variations in value orientations. Evanston,
IL: Row, Peterson and Company.
Knafo, A., Assor, A., Schwartz, S. H., & David, L. (2009). Culture, migration, and
family value socialization: A theoretical model and empirical investigation with
Russian immigrant youth in Israel. In U. Schönpflug (Ed.), Cultural transmission.
Psychological, developmental, social, and methodological aspects (pp. 269–296). New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Knafo, A., & Schwartz, S. H. (2009). Accounting for parent–child value congruence:
Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence. In U. Schönpflug (Ed.), Cultural
transmission. Psychological, developmental, social, and methodological aspects
(pp. 240–268). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on moral development: Vol 1. The philosophy of moral devel-
opment. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.
Kroger, J., Martinussen, M., & Marcia, J. E. (2010). Identity status change during
adolescence and young adulthood: A meta–analysis. Journal of Adolescence, 33,
683–698.
Kunnen, S. (2012). Introduction. In S. Kunnen (Ed.), A dynamic systems approach to
adolescent development (pp. 1–2). New York: Psychology Press.
Lambert, W. W. (1992). Cultural background to aggression: Correlates and consequences
of benevolent and malevolent gods and spirits. In A. Fraczek & H. Zumkley (Eds.),
Socialization and aggression (pp. 217–230). Berlin: Springer.
40 Trommsdorff

Larson, R. W., Wilson, S., Brown, B. B., Furstenberg, F. F., Jr., & Verma, S. (2002).
Changes in adolescents’ interpersonal experiences: Are they being prepared for
adult relationships in the twenty–first century? Journal of Research on Adolescence,
12, 31–68.
Lenski, G. (1961). The religious factor: A sociological study of religion’s impact on politics,
economics, and family life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Lerner, R. (2002). Concepts and theories of human development (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Lerner, R. M., Lewin-Bizan, S., & Warren, A. E. A. (2011). Concepts and theories of
human development. In M. H. Bornstein & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Cognitive develop-
ment: An advanced textbook (pp. 19–65). New York: Psychology Press.
Lerner, R. M., Roeser, R. W., & Phelps, E. (Eds.). (2008). Positive youth development
and spirituality: From theory to research. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton
Foundation Press.
Levesque, R. R. (2002). Not by faith alone: Religion, law, and adolescence. New York: New
York University Press.
Loewenthal, K. (2007). Religion, culture and mental health. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego–identity status. Journal of
Personality & Social Psychology, 3, 551–558.
  (1993). The ego identity status approach to ego identity. In J. E. Marcia, A. S. Waterman,
D. R. Matteson, S. L. Archer, & J. L. Orlofsky (Eds.), Ego identity: A handbook for
psychosocial research (pp. 3–21). New York: Springer.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition,
emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50,
370–396.
Mayer, B., & Trommsdorff, G. (2010). Adolescents’ value of children and their intentions
to have children: A cross-cultural and multilevel analysis. Journal of Cross-Cultural
Psychology, 41, 671–689.
Mayer, B., Trommsdorff, G., Kagitcibasi, C., & Mishra, R. (in press). Family
value patterns of independence/interdependence and their intergenera-
tional similarity in Germany, Turkey, and India. Family Science. doi: 10.1080/
19424620.2011.671503
McCullough, M. E., & Willoughby, B. L. B. (2009). Religion, self–regulation, and self–
control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135,
69–93.
Miller, R. B., & Glass, J. (1989). Parent–child attitude similarity across the life course.
Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51, 991–997.
Miller, W. R., & Thoresen, C. E. (2003). Spirituality, religion, and health: An emerging
research field. American Psychologist, 58, 24–35.
Myers, D. G. (2008). Religion and human flourishing. In M. Eid & R. J. Larsen (Eds.),
The science of subjective well–being (pp. 323–346). New York: Guilford.
Nauck, B. (2009). Intergenerational transmission, social capital, and interethnic contact
in immigrant families. In U. Schönpflug (Ed.), Cultural transmission. Psychological,
developmental, social, and methodological aspects (pp. 161–184). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 41

  (2010). Intergenerational relationships and female inheritance expectations:


Comparative results from eight societies in Asia, Europe, and North America.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41, 690–705.
Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A. F. (2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosocial-
ity. Science, 322, 58–62.
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2004). Measuring secularization. In P. Norris & R. Inglehart
(Eds.), Sacred and secular – Religion and politics worldwide (pp. 33–52). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Nunner-Winkler, G. (1995). Moralentwicklung im Kindesalter. Zur Frage nach dem
Verhältnis von Moral und Religion [Moral development in childhood. The ques-
tion of the relationship of moral and religion]. In E. Gross (Ed.), Der Kinderglaube.
Perspektiven aus der Forschung für die Praxis (pp. 47–64). Donauwörth, Germany:
Auer.
Nurmi, J. E. (1998). Adolescents, cultures and conflicts  – Growing up in contemporary
Europe. European advances in adolescent research. New York: Garland.
Oser, F. K., Scarlett, W. G., & Bucher, A. (2006). Religious and spiritual development
throughout the life span. In R. M. Lerner & W. Damon (Eds.), Handbook of child
psychology (6th ed.): Vol. 1, Theoretical models of human development. (pp. 942–
998). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individual-
ism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta–analyses.
Psychological Bulletin, 128, 3–72.
Paloutzian, R. F., & Park, C. L. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook of the psychology of religion and
spirituality. New York: Guilford.
Pankhurst, J. G., & Houseknecht, S. K. (2000). Introduction: The religion–family link-
age and social change  – a neglected area of study. In S. K. Houseknecht & J. G.
Pankhurst (Eds.), Family, religion, and social change in diverse societies (pp. 1–40).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pargament, K. I. (2002). Is religion nothing but …? Explaining religion versus explain-
ing religion away. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 239–244.
Pargament, K. I., & Cummings, J. (2010). Anchored by faith: Religion as a resilience
factor. In J. W. Reich, A. J. Zautra, & J. Hall (Eds.), Handbook of adult resilience
(pp. 193–210). New York: Guilford.
Parsons, T. (1951). The social system. London: Routledge & Paul.
Parsons, T., & Shils, E. A. (Eds.). (1951). Toward a general theory of action. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Pearce, L. D., & Thornton, A. (2007). Religious identity and family ideologies in the
transition to adulthood. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 69, 1227–1243.
Pettersson, T. (2007). Religion in contemporary society: Eroded human well–being,
supported by cultural diversity. In Y. Esmer & T. Pettersson (Eds.), Measuring and
mapping cultures: 25 years of comparative value surveys (pp. 127–153). Leiden, The
Netherlands: Brill.
Phalet, K., & Schönpflug, U. (2001). Intergenerational transmission in Turkish immi-
grant families: Parental collectivism, achievement values and gender differences.
Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 32, 489–504.
Phinney, J. S. (2008). Bridging identities and disciplines: Advances and challenges in
understanding multiple identities. In M. Azmitia, M. Syed, & K. Radmacher (Eds.),
42 Trommsdorff

The intersections of personal and social identities. New Directions for Child and
Adolescent Development, 120, 97–109.
Piaget, J. (1928). Immanence et transcendence [Immanence and transcendence]. In
J. Piaget & J. de la Harpe (Eds.), Deux types d’attitude religieuse: Immanence et tran-
scendence (Editions de l’Association Chretienne d’Etudiants de Suisse Romande,
Depot ed., pp. 5–40). Geneva: Labor.
Plante, T. G., & Sherman, A. (Eds.). (2001). Faith and health: Psychological perspectives.
New York: Guilford.
Pollner, M. (1989). Divine relations, social relations, and well–being. Journal of Health
and Social Behavior, 30, 92–104.
Powell, L. H., Shahabi, L., & Thorensen, C. E. (2003). Religion and spirituality: Linkages
to physical health. American Psychologist, 58, 36–52.
Raiya, H., Pargament, K. I., & Magyar-Russell, G. (2010). When religion goes awry:
Religious risk factors for poorer health and well–being. In P. J. Verhagen, H. M. van
Praag, J. López–Ibor Jr., L. Cox, & D. Moussaoui (Eds.), Religion and psychiatry:
Beyond boundaries (pp. 389–411). New York: Wiley–Blackwell.
Ream, G. L., & Savin–Williams, R. C. (2003). Religious development in adolescence.
In G. R. Adams & M. D. Berzonsky (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of adolescence. (pp.
51–59). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Roelkepartain, E. C., King, P. E., Wagener, L., & Benson, P. L. (Eds.). (2005). The handbook
of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rokeach, M. (1969). Value systems and religion. Review of Religious Research, 22,
2–23.
  (1973). The nature of human values. New York: Free Press.
Rothbaum, F., Pott, M., Azuma, H., Miyake, K., & Weisz, J. (2000). The development of
close relationships in Japan and the United States: Paths of symbiotic harmony and
generative tension. Child Development, 71, 1121–1142.
Rothbaum, F., & Trommsdorff, G. (2007). Do roots and wings oppose or complement
one another? The socialization of autonomy and relatedness in cultural context. In
J. E. Grusec & P. Hastings (Eds.), The handbook of socialization (pp. 461–489). New
York: Guilford.
Rothbaum, F., & Wang, Y. Z. (2010). Fostering the child’s malleable views of the self and
the world: Caregiving practices in East Asian and European-American communi-
ties. In B. Mayer & H.-J. Kornadt (Eds.), Psychologie – Kultur – Gesellschaft (pp.
101–120). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.
Rudy, D., & Grusec, J. E. (2001). Correlates of authoritarian parenting in individualist
and collectivist cultures and implications for understanding the transmission of
values. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32, 202–212.
Sabatier, C., Mayer, B., Friedlmeier, M., Lubiewska, K., & Trommsdorff, G. (2011).
Religiosity, family orientation, and life satisfaction of adolescents in four countries.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 1375–1393.
Saroglou, V. (2011). Believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging: The big four reli-
gious dimensions and cultural variation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42,
1320–1340.
Saroglou, V., Delpierre, V., & Dernelle, R. (2004). Values and religiosity: A meta–­
analysis of studies using Schwartz’s model. Personality and Individual Differences,
37, 721–734.
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 43

Sasaki, J. Y., & Kim, H. S. (2010). At the intersection of culture and religion: A cul-
tural analysis of religion’s implications for secondary control and social affiliation.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 401–414.
Sasaki, J. Y., Kim, H. S., & Xu, J. (2011). Religion and well–being: The moderating
role of culture and the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene. Journal of Cross-Cultural
Psychology, 42, 1394–1405.
Schönpflug, U. (Ed.). (2009). Cultural transmission. Psychological, developmental, social,
and methodological aspects. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schwartz, S. H. (Ed.). (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical
advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
  (1996). Value priorities and behavior: Applying a theory of integrated value systems.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schwartz, S. H. (2006). A theory of cultural value orientations: Explication and applica-
tions. Comparative Sociology, 5, 137–182.
  (2007). Cultural and individual value correlates of capitalism: A comparative analysis.
Psychological Inquiry, 18, 52–57.
Schwartz, S. H., & Sagi, G. (2000). Value consensus and importance: A cross-national
study. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 31, 465–497.
Schwartz, S. H., & Vecchione, M. (2011, June). A revised theory and new instrument
to measure basic individual values. In S. H. Schwartz (Chair), A refined theory
of human values: What, how, and why? Symposium conducted at the Regional
Meeting of the International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP),
Istanbul, Turkey.
Schwarz, B. (2007). Jugend im Kulturvergleich [Adolescence in cross-cultural compar-
ison]. In G. Trommsdorff & H.-J. Kornadt (Eds.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie:
Serie VII, Band 2. Kulturvergleichende Psychologie: Kulturelle Determinanten des
Erlebens und Verhaltens (pp. 599–641). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.
Scott, J., & Braun, M. (2006). Individualization of family values? In P. Ester, M. Braun, &
P. Mohler (Eds.), Globalization, value change, and generations. (pp. 61–88). Leiden,
The Netherlands: Brill.
Seginer, R. (2009). Future orientation: Developmental and ecological perspectives. New
York: Springer Science + Business Media.
Silbereisen, R. K., & Chen, X. (Eds.). (2010). Social change and human development:
Concepts and results. London: Sage.
Silberman, I. (2005). Religion as a meaning system: Implications for the new millen-
nium. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 641–663.
Silverstein, M., Gans, D., Lowenstein, A., Giarrusso, R., & Bengtson, V. L. (2010). Older
parent–child relationships in six developed nations: Comparisons at the intersec-
tion of affection and conflict. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 1006–1021.
Smith, C., & Lundquist Denton, M. (2005). Soul searching. The religious and spiritual
lives of American teenagers. Oxford: University Press.
Smith, P. B., & Schwartz, S. H. (1997). Values. In J. W. Berry, M. H. Segall, & C. Kagitcibasi
(Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology. Social behavior and applications (Vol.
3, pp. 77–118). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Spranger, E. (1921). Lebensformen. Geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologie und Ethik der
Persönlichkeit [Life forms. Humanistic psychology and ethic of personality]. Halle,
Germany: Max Niemeyer.
44 Trommsdorff

Steinberg, L. D. (1999). Adolescence (5th ed.). New York: McGraw–Hill.


Steinberg, L., Graham, S., O’Brien, L., Woolard, J., Cauffman, E., & Banich, M. (2009).
Age differences in future orientation and delay discounting. Child Development,
80, 28–44.
Steinberg, L., & Morris, A. S. (2001). Adolescent development. Annual Review of
Psychology, 52, 83–110.
Streib, H., Hood, R. W., Keller, B., Csöff, R. M., & Silver, C. F. (2009). Deconversion:
Qualitative and quantitative results from cross-cultural research in Germany and the
United States of America. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Suckow, J. (2005). The value of children among Jews and Muslims in Israel: Methods
and results from the VOC–field study. In G. Trommsdorff & B. Nauck (Eds.), The
value of children in cross-cultural perspective. Case studies from eight societies (pp.
121–143). Lengerich, Germany: Pabst Science.
Triandis, H. C. (1995). Individualism & collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Trommsdorff, G. (1992). Values and social orientations of Japanese youth in intercul-
tural comparison. In S. Formanek & S. Linhart (Eds.), Japanese biographies: Life
histories, life cycles, life stages (pp. 57–81). Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften.
  (2000). Effects of social change on individual development: The role of social and
personal factors and the timing of events. In L. Crocket & R. K. Silbereisen (Eds.),
Negotiating adolescence in times of social change (pp. 58–68). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
  (2006). Parent–child relations over the life-span. A cross-cultural perspective. In K.
H. Rubin & O. B. Chung (Eds.), Parenting beliefs, behaviors, and parent–child rela-
tions. A cross-cultural perspective. (pp. 143–183). New York: Psychology Press.
  (2007). Entwicklung im kulturellen Kontext [Development in cultural context]. In G.
Trommsdorff & H.-J. Kornadt (Eds.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie: Themenbereich
C Theorie und Forschung, Serie VII Kulturvergleichende Psychologie. Band 2:
Kulturelle Determinanten des Erlebens und Verhaltens (pp. 435–519). Göttingen,
Germany: Hogrefe.
  (2009a). Intergenerational relations and cultural transmission. In U. Schönpflug
(Ed.), Cultural transmission. Psychological, developmental, social, and methodologi-
cal aspects (pp. 126–160). New York: Cambridge University Press.
  (2009b). A social change and a human development perspective on the value of chil-
dren. In S. Bekman & A. Aksu-Koc (Eds.), Perspectives on human development,
family and culture (pp. 86–107). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  (2012). Development of agentic regulation in cultural context: The role of self and
world views. Child Development Perspectives, 6, 19–26.
Trommsdorff, G., Cole, P. M., & Heikamp, T. (in press). Cultural variations in mothers’
intuitive theories: A preliminary report on interviewing mothers of five nations
about their socialization of children’s emotions. Global Studies of Childhood.
Trommsdorff, G., & Kornadt, H.-J. (2003). Parent–child relations in cross-cultural
­perspective. In L. Kuczynski (Ed.), Handbook of dynamics in parent–child relations
(pp. 271–306). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Trommsdorff, G., Mayer, B., & Albert, I. (2004). Dimensions of culture in intra-cultural
comparisons: Individualism/collectivism and family-related values in three genera-
tions. In H. Vinken, J. Soeters, & P. Ester (Eds.), Comparing cultures: Dimensions of
culture in a comparative perspective (pp. 157–184). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Cultural Perspectives on Values and Religion 45

Trommsdorff, G., & Nauck, B. (Eds.). (2005). The value of children in cross-cultural per-
spective. Case studies from eight societies. Lengerich, Germany: Pabst Science.
Trommsdorff, G., & Nauck, B. (2006). Demographic changes and parent–child relation-
ships. Parenting: Science and Practice, 6, 343–360.
Trommsdorff, G., & Nauck, B. (Eds.). (2010). The value of children: Overview and
progress and recent contributions [Special section]. Journal of Cross-Cultural
Psychology, 41.
Trommsdorff, G., & Rothbaum, F. (2008). Development of emotion regulation in cul-
tural context. In S. Ismer, S. Jung, S. Kronast, C. von Scheve, & M. Vandekerckhove
(Eds.), Regulating emotions: Social necessity and biological inheritance (pp. 85–120).
New York: Blackwell.
Trommsdorff, G., Suzuki, T., & Sasaki, M. (1987). Soziale Ungleichheiten in Japan und
der Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Social disparities in Japan and Germany]. Kölner
Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 39, 496–515.
Turner, B. S. (2011). Religion and modern society: Citizenship, secularisation and the
state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
van de Vijver, F. J. R., Hemert, D. A., & Poortinga, Y. H. (Eds.). (2008). Multilevel analysis
of individuals and culture. New York: Erlbaum.
Verma, S., & Maria, M. S. (2006). The changing global context of adolescent spiritual-
ity. In E. C. Roehlkepartain, P. Ebstyne King, L. Wagener, & P. L. Benson (Eds.),
The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence (pp. 124–136).
London: Sage.
Warren, A. E. A., Lerner, R. M., & Phelps, E. (2011). Research perspectives and future
possibilities in the study of thriving and spirituality: A view of the issues. In A. E.
A. Warren, R. M. Lerner, & E. Phelps (Eds.), Thriving and spirituality among youth:
Research perspectives and future possibilities (pp. 1–18). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Waterman, A. S. (1985). Identity in the context of adolescent psychology. New Directions
for Child Development, 30, 305–324.
Weber, M. (1958). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York: Scribner.
  (1988). Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie [Collected articles about sociol-
ogy of religion] (9th ed.). Tübingen, Germany: Mohr.
Werner, H. (1948). Comparative psychology of mental development. Oxford: Follett.
Whiting, B. B., & Whiting, J. W. M. (1975). Children of six cultures: A psycho–cultural
analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wilson, D. S. (2003). Darwin’s cathedral: Evolution, religion, and the nature of society.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Woodhead, L. (2008). Gendering secularisation theory. Social Compass, 55, 187–193.
Wulff, D. (1991). Psychology of religion: Classic and contemporary views. New York:
Wiley & Sons.
Wundt, W. (1926). Völkerpsychologie: Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von
Sprache, Mythus und Sitte [Ethnopsychology: An investigation of the developmen-
tal laws of speech, myth, and convention]. Leipzig: Alfred Kröner Verlag.
Youniss, J., McLellan, J.A., & Yates, M. (1999). Religion, community service, and identity
in American youth. Journal of Adolescence, 22, 243–253.
2 Psychological Functions of Religion in
Youth – A Historical and Cultural Perspective

Hans-Joachim Kornadt

Abstract
Psychological functions of religion in youth are discussed from a motiva-
tional and anthropological approach including a historical and cultural
perspective. The role of religious beliefs in ancient, medieval, and tradi-
tional societies are described, referring to some possible origins in the evo-
lution of such beliefs. These origins are seen in the belief in an invisible
“other” (or spiritual) world, motivated to make sense of otherwise incom-
prehensible events. This is assumed to have strong psychological effects
on the formation of religion in mankind, on the development of religious
practices, and the role and importance of shamans and priests. The psycho-
logical functions of religion in adolescents’ development by initiation rites,
and in modern societies with focus on natural sciences and a seculariza-
tion of the worldview are discussed. There are a great variety of beliefs and
strong differences in the importance of religion in different cultures. The
importance and power of religion differ, ranging from fundamentalism to
secularization. The importance of these differences for emergent adults are
considered. Religiosity may foster identity development, civic engagement,
prosocial activities, and life satisfaction. However, it can also promote
other less desirable behaviors in youth like intolerance and aggressiveness
against unbelievers. Both the cultural context and individual motivations
are shown to affect religious development and personality development in
adolescence in various ways.

In this chapter, I discuss religion and the power of religious belief from
a psychological perspective and describe the effects of belief in God and
an “other” spirit world. First, I discuss the stabilizing role of religion for
societies and for the power of priests and shamans. Second, I describe the
ambiguous importance of religion and the power of belief for the develop-
ment and value orientation of youth.

46
Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth 47

Role of Religious Belief in Ancient, Medieval, and Traditional


Societies
Historical View on the Development of Religion.  Wilhelm Wundt, the
founder of cultural psychology, held that the beginning of religion dates
back to the early development of mankind, based on archaeological and
ethnological findings (Wundt, 1926). Early prehistoric people had to sur-
vive in a dangerous world with only a limited understanding of nature and
the events around them. They were certainly aware of some immediate
cause-and-effect relationships of their own actions like throwing stones
or angering another person by injuring him or her, but dramatic events
like lightning, illness, or death were incomprehensible, causing permanent
uncertainty. They needed to make sense of the world around them. With
the universal human tendency to engage in causal attributions (Heider,
1958) they assumed the existence of an invisible world with powerful spirits
behind those events. They believed in the permanent influence of those
spirits on everyday life. In the case of a geocentric worldview, humans may
be conceived of as part of the environment (e.g., Mishra & Dasen, 2005)
and, when combined with strong emotional responses like anxiety, that
belief can strengthen to become absolutely convincing.
Even much later, in the Neolithic period, an example of the origin of
such a belief can be found: In the Rigveda, the oldest Indian religious text,
whose content is about 4000 years old. The Rigveda describes Agni, who
was worshipped as the God of fire and believed to be born out of a stone.
Sparks, the source of fire, can come from flint stones. This illustrates how
such a belief can develop from the interpretation of natural phenomena
(Maier, 2008). Those events were incomprehensible and therefore mysteri-
ous. In the Palaeolithic period it was therefore not unreasonable to assume
the existence of an invisible other world with secret powerful spirits to be
feared, admired, and worshipped. Because people had only limited knowl-
edge, they likely conceived the spirits to be like themselves and ascribed
them good and bad tempers and intentions. Thus, it would be logical to
try to appease the spirits with prayers or offerings or by worshipping them,
often at places believed to be their home, like big trees, rocks, or springs
(Bellah, 1970). Later in the Palaeolithic era, the Homo neanderthalensis
seem to have believed in a life after death: they buried their deceased with
funerary goods, perhaps to make the deceased comfortable in the other
world (Clark, 1962).
Some gifted members of the group became middlemen for the invisi-
ble world and its spirits. They became priests or and sometimes shamans.
They interpreted natural phenomena as signs of the spirits and the spirits’
48 Kornadt

demands, using oracles and omina. They told how the spirits should be
appeased by rituals, offerings, and worshipping (Wahle, 1973). In this stage
of development, worshipping and offerings were presented in order to
receive the god’s benevolence. Thus, offerings and praying had the char-
acter of do ut des: it was a pragmatic action, like exchanging presents with
neighbors to establish a friendly relationship or to make peace with ene-
mies or rivals.
The nature of worship as a “deal” between men and spirits changed fun-
damentally when divine demands were no longer seen as directed to the
benefit of the gods, but to fellow men. People had developed – based on the
theory of mind – the ability to understand others’ intentions and wishes,
which led to them experiencing others’ needs and emotions as well. This
empathy became a central component of religious beliefs, at least for one’s
own religious group. This was, for instance, expressed by King Musili of the
Hittites in the 14th century before Christ. He declared that an oracle had
disclosed that the misfortunes their people had suffered over the last 20
years were the divine punishment for a crime among humans (Maier, 2008).
This indicates the belief that a god is demanding moral conduct between
men – not just toward the god alone – and that disobeying this demand is
a sin, which will be severely punished by invisible powers or gods. In the
Bible, the same is described as a consequence of “eating from the tree of
knowledge,” and “recognizing one another” became the precondition of sin.
Religious moral demands became the basis for guilt and the fear of being
severely punished, possibly with eternal punishment after death.

Religion in Ancient Elaborated Cultures.  In historical times, many dif-


ferentiated cultures emerged, such as in Egypt, Sumer, Assyr, and China.
Various elaborate belief systems developed with differing views of the rela-
tionship between the real, visible world and the “other” world, sometimes
differentiated as Heaven and the Underworld. Gods were assumed to have a
special interest in humans and special temples were built and rituals devel-
oped for their worship. Elaborate religious systems became the basic ideol-
ogy and distinguishing characteristic of cultures and the most important
order in establishing, and unifying, a society. Sometimes the king was the
highest priest and a theocracy was developed; religion and the tribe or the
state were unified. Even details like what to eat, what to wear, and when to
pray were prescribed. Nonbelievers were not tolerated and were sometimes
seen as enemies and prosecuted.
Men strived to gain the gods’ benevolence, and sometimes attempted
to come as close as possible to the divine powers by meditation or ecstasy.
Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth 49

Various mystery cults developed (Kloft, 2010), such as the Osiris cult in
ancient Egypt and later in Rome, the Demeter cult in ancient Greece, and
the Persian Mithras cult, which later in Roman times even spread through
Western Europe.
In many of these cultures, the priest held high status and a great deal
of power as the interpreter of the meaning and wishes of the gods. Priests
could order special offerings, which in some cultures even included human
sacrifices. The Celtic Druids in Ireland offered human sacrifices until the
third century after Christ (Cunliffe, 1993; Demandt, 2005).

Religion and Shamanism in Traditional Cultures.  In more traditional,


indigenous cultures, religious belief and the imagined “other world” are
usually less elaborate. This is the case in Haiti, for instance, with believ-
ers in voodoo, and was true in Indonesia until the 20th century with the
Batak (Sumatra) and Dayaks (Sulavesi) and is the case with the Sundanese
and even the Balinese today. Moral demands here also have a metaphysical
importance. In these primarily subsistence economies, every culture devel-
oped its own rules and rights. Each member of the tribe or group obeyed
the customs (Adat) of worshipping or offerings. These religious beliefs had
a stabilizing function for the social structure, distinguishing each particular
tribe from others. The belief in the other world was in a way simpler, but
the mysticism associated with the other world was stronger, endowing the
shamans with a great deal of magical power.
Shamanism was an early development in human prehistory, dating back
at least to the Paleolithic era (approximately 200,000 years ago). Scenes
of shamanistic séance, as they appear today in North-Asiatic tribes, have
existed at least since the young Paleolithic period (approximately 14,000
years ago): in the Lascaux cave (Dordogne, southern France), a man is
depicted lying on the ground as if in a trance, wearing a mask of a bird
head; a bird on a stick is thought to symbolize his soul on the way to the
other world (Müller, 2006). Shamanism existed in most ancient hunting
and fishing cultures, spreading from Feuerland through all North-Eurasian
hunting and fishing cultures until reaching Tibet, Japan, Indonesia, and the
Australian Aborigines (Müller, 2006). Fertility in humans and nature and
success in hunting were people’s primary interests, and shamans played an
important role in mitigating concerns: both areas were believed to depend
on the good or evil will of supernatural powers, and the shamans had the
ability to communicate with those powers (Winstedt, 1982). The basis of
those beliefs and therefore, the power of the shamans was based on the
cosmologic dualism between the visible world and the other, supernatural
50 Kornadt

invisible world with its mighty spirits. Shamanism is therefore also a par-
ticularly impressive example for the power of belief in the other world.
Shamans were like priests – the middlemen between the present and the
other world, men and spirits, the living and the ancestors.
The central concept in Shamanism is the belief in the soul. The vital soul
enables the body to live. Decline of vitality was interpreted as weakness of
the vital soul, caused for example, by an enemy’s sorcery or contact with
the “radiation” of another strange soul. A free soul can leave the body for a
limited time: if the shaman is in a trance, his or her soul can get in contact
with spirits of the other world, and return with knowledge (e.g., how to heal
a sick person, who told the truth, or what the best time is for harvesting,
hunting, or warfare). For any human, when a dramatic event occurs – such
as a sudden, severe shock or a serious argument – the soul becomes severely
disturbed and can even temporarily leave the body, causing serious sick-
ness or even death (Winstedt, 1982). All these phenomena demonstrate the
strong power of belief. Bad events were mostly interpreted as being caused
by one’s own mistakes or wrongdoings.

Religion and Adolescent Development in Traditional Societies.  Youth in


ancient, medieval, and traditional societies grew up without many puberty
problems, embedded in their culture with its material and spiritual world,
which were structured on religious belief. They grew up in close, intimate
contact with others of various ages: with siblings, parents, and many other
adults together in an extended group. They had to take on duties and learn
the skills and attitudes needed to survive in the adult world as early as
possible. They learned how to master useful tasks according to their age
and thereby developed self-confidence and their own identity as members
of their culture. With puberty, they were seen as adults and expected to
assume all duties, tasks, and rights of an adult. The social organization, its
rules, values, and skills needed were taken for granted, as self-understand-
ing (Brown, Larson, & Saraswathi, 2002).
Of course, the average life expectancy in these cultures was quite short,
not much more than 30 years of age. In the early European middle ages
(11–15th centuries), for instance, after a period of strict training, young
men were knighted at about 14 years of age, and were then seen as adults
and allowed to marry.
In many traditional cultures, adolescents went through formalized rites
of passage. They have been and still are different in different cultures. These
rites of passage are always aimed at supporting integration into the world of
Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth 51

adults and preserving cultural traditions. In many cultures, elaborate initi-


ation rituals are established. Boys and girls are often first isolated and then
undergo initiation procedures that are sometimes very stressful and anxi-
ety inducing. Adolescents may have to endure painful procedures like cir-
cumcision, teeth cutting (e.g., formerly in Bali), or tattooing, among others.
Only when they have passed these rites will they be accepted in the world of
the adults, and told the duties and rules of adulthood. Mythical traditions,
beliefs, and fears, and, in some cases, secret customs and holy stories of
their origin or holy places are entrusted to the newly recognized adults. The
passage through frightening situations and the successful coping with such
tasks enforces cultural ties and the social structure. The experience of these
traumatic initiation rites also reinforces the belief in the other world and
the belief in the power of shamans or magicians (Winstedt, 1982).

Psychological Aspects of Religious Belief.  From a psychological point of


view, it is necessary to understand the immense convincing power that a
religious belief in another world and its spirits can have. An example comes
from ancient Greece: their gods could intervene in human fate, and they
disclosed their intervention through, for example, the oracle in Delphi,
where the gods were worshipped. In some cultures, however, there is a com-
plete penetration of the other world into what we understand to be the real
world, so that every step and every action might somehow be under the
possible influence of spirits, or permanently observed or governed by God.
This is the case with some indigenous cultures, such as the former Batak
cultures, which viewed spirits as mostly evil and dangerous; this is similar
today in Thai and Balinese cultures as well. Their spirits are rather hostile
but can be calmed by rituals and offerings. In Bali, temples are everywhere,
both tiny and big, and the gods receive offerings every day (Kornadt, 2011).
In some religious systems, there is no distinction between this world and
the other world: there is only one universe (e.g., in some forms of Buddhism
[Sankya]). There is no real distinction between the invisible world and our
existence in everyday life, everything is complexly connected (Dalai Lama,
2005).
Importantly, if such a belief is established, it is immune against rational
arguments. Being convinced about the existence of an invisible other world
with secret powers beyond understanding or about immediate divine reve-
lation is a matter of faith and thus cannot be disproven. According to some
beliefs, the real world is the other world, whereas our “real world” is seen as
a kind of shadow, or as reflecting a small portion of the universe.
52 Kornadt

Summary
There are three points to underline: first, the idea of an invisible other world
exists more or less in all cultures. This is sometimes a special sphere distinct
from our real, visible world. Sometimes, there is no real distinction: the
spirits of the other world are present everywhere and the real world is only
a part of the whole unknown universe, or a transition to the invisible world.
Second, belief in the other world can be an extreme power. With the Batak
of northern Sumatra, the shaman, or Datu, could in former days be the
master of life and death. A man who violated a taboo or was condemned by
the Datu to face an ordeal could die within a few days, even though he was
physically untouched. It was the effect of a shock owing to guilt, or to anxi-
ety of severe punishment in the other world (Kornadt, 2011; Winkler, 1925;
M. Yamaluddin, personal communication, March, 1985). Third, any belief
referring to the invisible other world is immune against logical arguments.
The details of such a belief are seen as higher wisdom and therefore irre-
futable. The power of belief is strikingly formulated by the German writer
Wilhelm Busch (1954): “Nur was wir glauben, wissen wir gewiss” (Only
what we believe do we know with certainty).

Psychological Functions of Religion for Adolescents’


Development in Modern Societies
Religion in Modern Societies
In the second part, I describe the ambiguous role of religion for the devel-
opment and value orientation of youth in modern societies. The function
of religion has changed since modernization in most societies. Therefore,
the importance of religion to youth and emerging adults has also changed,
namely transforming into a private matter (Hölliger & Haller, 2009; Sinabell,
2009). In postmodern, industrialized societies, the pervasive power of reli-
gion with its function of providing common norms and social cohesion
has mostly vanished (Sinabell, 2009). In our Western societies, we are
used to seeing our world and the universe today as it is conceptualized by
natural sciences. In Western Europe, the idea of an invisible other world,
commandments by God, and an afterlife have mostly lost their convincing
power. Also, the concept of sin has lost its metaphysical meaning. Laws
are manmade by political negotiation, variables, and are different in each
state. Violating moral rules is not much more than breaking an ordinary
law (Sinabell, 2009).
The shift in religious beliefs occurring in Europe is remarkable because
it differs so greatly from religiosity in medieval times. People at that time
Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth 53

believed in the afterlife, and earthly life was seen as a passage toward the last
judgment, leading either into paradise or to eternal damnation. Christians
who did not accept parts of the official faith were prosecuted (e.g., Albigenser;
Jan Huss), others were burned as witches. In famous European paintings of
the 15th and 16th centuries, those beliefs are convincingly depicted.
Today in some art circles, it has become even fashionable to trivialize
Christian symbols like the Holy Communion or the crucifix as a joke. In
Germany, there is scarcely any protest against such Christian sacrilege,
although the same is not true for acts of Islamic heresy (Huber, 2010).
However the importance of religion varies considerably between cul-
tures: the importance of Christianity varies between West and East Europe,
Russia, and the United States. In Germany, 33 percent claim to be without
any religious association (Gasper, 2009). In the United States, in contrast,
intensive religious life exists in numerous communities, and 80 percent of
students report to believe in God (Higher Education Research Institute,
2003; Smith & Lundquist Denton, 2005). Within these communities, there
is a great variety of beliefs: even members of the Evangelical Alliance, which
have similar positions regarding the creation and rejection of evolution-
ary theory can have opposite positions in other important aspects. All of
these mostly protestant communities descend from the early European
immigrants who left their homes to practice their individual interpreta-
tions of Christianity (Gasper, 2009).Within Islam there is splitting between
the Sunnis and the Shiites, and differences exist as well between the ortho-
dox Wahhabites (in Saudi Arabia) and more moderate forms of Islam (in
Tunisia, hitherto Indonesia).

Religion and Adolescent Development


Youth in modern societies face difficulties growing up and becoming well-
integrated and productive members of their societies because of many rea-
sons (see Arnett, 2000, 2007). An important factor is the prolonged emerging
adulthood (Arnett, 2000), during which adolescents do not have the social
roles and obligations of adulthood. Instead, adolescents spend many years
on training and education, often until age 25 or older. Some individuals are
students even until 30 years of age. This tendency is increasing in Germany:
in 1999, one-third of adults between 20 and 24 years of age were students or
trainees, whereas in 2009, already nearly one-half were (Kary, 2011, March).
During this developmental stage, adolescents experience greater instability
and are searching for identity (Elkind, 1999; Roeser, Lerner, & Phelps, 2008).
Without responsible duties it becomes difficult to establish self-confidence
and a self-identity (Arnett, 2007; Eccles, 2007). For the formation of self-
54 Kornadt

image and personal and social identity, this is a crucial developmental period,
and it is a sensitive time for religiosity (Barry, Nelson, Davarya, & Urry, 2010;
Good & Willoughby, 2008). Especially in Western European societies, adult
life has become very diverse, embracing a wide variety of lifestyles (Côté,
2009; Gagné, 2011; Patterson & Hastings 2007; Spilka, Hood, Hunsberger, &
Gorsuch, 2003). The media has a diverse and important influence. In one’s
professional life, there is decreasing stability. For youth, it is therefore dif-
ficult to develop an image of what kind of a person they want to be in the
future (see Seginer, 2008, 2009, for future orientation and identity develop-
ment of adolescents). Adolescents have difficulty fulfilling their basic needs
for autonomy and relatedness in different cultural contexts (Rothbaum &
Trommsdorff, 2007) and in a permanently changing environment (Mayer &
Trommsdorff, Chapter 15 in this volume).
In this circumstance, the timing of puberty becomes relevant. Whereas
puberty coincided with the transition to adulthood in the past, that is no
longer the case today. During puberty, physiological hormonal changes
are accompanied by psychological effects that often result in higher emo-
tional liability (Arnett, 2000, 2007) and excitability, combined with a need
for higher physical activity (Steinberg, 2005), especially in males because
of an increase of testosterone (Henning & Netter, 2005). In behavior, this
is expressed through sensation seeking and an increased tendency toward
aggressive behavior (Rosenblitt, Soler, Johnson, & Quadagno, 2001). In
some traditional cultures, these tendencies have been channeled through
initiation rites, sometimes by headhunting – the practice of taking and pre-
serving a person’s head after killing them (Cunliffe, 1993; Hoskins, 1989).
The Christian equivalent is confirmation in Catholicism and Protestantism,
but confirmation takes place between 12 and 15 years of age and, as a result,
is no longer associated with a transition to adulthood.
It is not surprising that more or less isolated youth cultures (Bukowski,
Brendgen, & Vitaro, 2007) have developed, separate from adult life with its
duties and regularities (Süss, 2009). During emerging adulthood (Arnett,
2000), youth have a great deal of time to explore their personal identity.
Some experiment with various identities (Baer, 2009), sometimes reinvent-
ing themselves to match the prevailing norm of their special social circle
(Baier, Pfeiffer, Simonson, & Rabold, 2009; Farin, 2010). They experiment
with premarital sex, drugs, alcohol, and other risky behaviors. Some come
even in serious conflicts (Arnett, 2007): contest binge drinking is on the
rise. In Germany, for example, the number of youths between ages 10 and
19 who were hospitalized with severe alcohol intoxication increased by 178
percent (to 26,428 youth) between 2000 and 2009 (Statistisches Bundesamt,
Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth 55

2011). I assume that religion is mostly of no relevance here, in contrast to


consumption (Deutsch & Theodorou, 2010).
Other adolescents seek an orderly life regulated by rules and moral prin-
ciples and long for a relatively stable and reliable social surrounding. These
youth tend to join sports or other clubs, such as emergency service or vol-
untary fire brigade or church choir. A sense of belonging is important in
adolescence, and these activities can provide the desired social contact and
embeddedness (Bukowski et al., 2007).
Here the question arises, can religion be a stabilizing factor for personal-
ity development? An understanding and supporting person – for instance, a
teacher or a priest – can guide the way to religious belief. In particular, inse-
curely attached youths can develop a real belief in and a strong attachment
to a transcendental God, who is permanently watching and protecting them
(Birgegard & Granqvist, 2004; Emmons & Paloutzian, 2003; Granqvist, 1998,
2002; Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1990). The rules and norms for moral conduct
that are an integral part of religion, together with mutual reinforcement and
encouragement, can give individuals enormous inner security, self-control and
stability (McCullough & Willoughby, 2009; Saroglou, Chapter 17 in this vol-
ume; Trommsdorff, 2012); this can give pride in having escaped temptation.
This sense of security and stability is independent of the kind of religion.
For individuals who are actively religious, religion has an important
influence on their behavior and development. Many empirical studies have
shown that, in general, religious adolescents have more and better social
relationships, engage in fewer risky behaviors, are more civically engaged,
and report themselves to be happier and healthier than nonreligious ado-
lescents (Bond, Lun, & Li, Chapter 5 in this volume; Emmons & Paloutzian,
2003; King & Furrow, 2004; Lerner, Roeser, & Phelps, 2008; Sherrod &
Spiewak, 2008; Steenwyk, Atkins, Bedics, & Whitley, 2010; Urry & Poey,
2008). However, the exact meaning of being “religious” is unclear. The stud-
ies mostly use external indicators for religiousness, with statements such as
“being a member of a church or a religious community,” “going to church
every Sunday,” or “I believe in God.” It turns out, however, that strong reli-
giosity can also have negative consequences, for example, less openness and
less critical thinking (Mayer & Trommsdorff, Chapter 15 in this volume;
Pargamont, 2002; Saroglou, Chapter 17 in this volume).
Answers reported in an anonymous questionnaire cannot definitively
speak to the psychological content of being religious or believing in God.
In a 2005 study by Smith and Lundquist Denton for example, the authors
described the prevailing religious worldviews among adolescents in the
United States in terms of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). They
56 Kornadt

suggested that the MTD “worldview among American adolescents is deism


because the sacred idea is that a deity, an ultimate being called God (or Allah
or Yahweh) created the universe, ordered it with divine moral laws, and
watches over human life on earth … God wants them to be happy … by
obeying moral laws … good people go to Heaven when they die” (Smith &
Lundquist Denton, 2005, p. 163). It is a distant God, who is only selectively
invoked to take care of certain needs.
Most studies on religion and youth have been conducted in the United
States. The studies have primarily focused on whether religion promotes
well-being, better health, or civic engagement. This question is relevant
because there is a rising concern in the United States that young people
might be “more self-obsessed than ever before” (Dingfelder, 2011, p. 64).
In one such study, Barry and Nelson (2005) compared 445 students from
three different universities – a private Catholic university, a large Mormon
university, and a large public university  – investigating the relationship
between the role religion has played in students’ lives and students’ reported
readiness for adulthood. The authors assumed that students selecting these
universities subscribed to the universities’ values and religious culture and
accepted their rules of conduct. The Mormon university requested that stu-
dents sign a strict honor code (which stipulated rules for dress, grooming,
substance use, and sexual behavior); the students at the Catholic university
had to sign an academic honor code, but personal conduct was stipulated
only by student conduct guidelines; in the public university, an academic
honor code existed, but no personal code. Students completed a question-
naire that asked questions both about religion (e.g., the importance of their
religious beliefs and whether they believed in God) and about reaching
adulthood (e.g., to what extent they had reached independence and norm
compliance). As expected, the Mormon students rated themselves higher
on all criteria for adulthood.
Yet again, the meaning of religion in psychological terms of the subjec-
tive content of belief and its emotional importance is unclear. Successful
personality development and social behavior can also be promoted by many
other kinds of social support, such as being well embedded in a secular
youth club with positive social values. However, there are other phenomena
that provide information about the importance and effect of religious belief
for personality development.

Sects and Adolescent Development


Sects (small groups split from the regular church or belief) have developed
in most world religions. However, in Islam, any deviation from official
Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth 57

Islamic belief is severely punished, sometimes by death. Within the con-


text of this chapter, sects of interest are those that explicitly aim to further
a more intensive spiritual life and connection to God or to the universe
according to unlimited consciousness (e.g., “Brahma,” like in the Hindu
Marga Sect). Within the Christian world, there are many different forms,
often in explicit contrast to the mainstream religion.
Sects are often founded by a charismatic leader, who may claim to possess
a new revelation or the ultimate truth, or claim that he or she can provide
a close relationship to God. These assertions can be attractive to believing
youth, who may feel disoriented in their everyday world and long to feel
close to God. The sect imparts the conviction of being chosen, offers mean-
ing to their lives, and safety in the community (Sinabell, 2009). For some
youth, this belief can stabilize their personality development. However, we
can also sometimes see negative sides of the power of religious belief.
One characteristic of sects known as “youth cults” is a high conformity
within the sect and isolation from the outer world. The experience of being
in close proximity to God is sometimes enhanced by intensive meditation
and yoga, psychedelic drugs, other “mind expanding” psychological tech-
niques, or by sexual attachment to the leader (“liberated sexuality”). Critics
describe these means as brainwashing (Valentin & Gasper, 2009).
In the case of strong internal pressure for conformity and isolation
from the outside world, a mindset can develop that is characterized by a
rigid one-sided orientation to God and redemption in the afterlife, thereby
neglecting the “real” world. Under external pressure, the internal group
cohesion becomes tightened and accepting orders by the leader becomes
unavoidable. Those conditions have led to some dramatic and destruc-
tive events: for example in Jonestown in Guyana, over 900 members of the
Peoples Temple cult died in 1978, mostly by suicide at the behest of cult
leader Jim Jones (Lademann-Priemer, 2009).

Muslim Youth in Germany


Islam provides another example of the role and power of religious belief.
About four million Muslims live in Germany; most of them are from Turkey
(sometimes from remote areas in Anatolia) or Arab countries. About 1.8
million Muslims are under 25 years of age. Among those Muslim youth, a
special youth culture (“Pop–Islam”) has developed that has many different
forms of behavior and values. For these adolescents, Islamic belief, being
a member of German society, and the modern lifestyle, can all become
part of their identity (“hybrid identity”; Nordbruch, 2010, p. 34). Some
adolescents, however, even when they are raised by parents with moderate
58 Kornadt

religious beliefs, develop an identity as true Muslims, in opposition to their


parents.
Radical Islamic preachers are active in several mosques in Germany
and especially on the Internet. They preach hatred against the “decadent
Western Christian world,” reject every modern interpretation of the Koran,
and advertise for the Jihad. Some even propagate the Sharia and the rule
that one should behead an apostate and stone an unfaithful wife. Under
these conditions, it is an interesting question as to how young Muslims
develop their identity: on the one hand, they may be influenced by radical
preachers, and on the other hand, they must meet the challenge of integrat-
ing into the German secular majority culture in order to earn a living. Not
all Muslim adolescents develop the hybrid identity.
Studies by Holtz and Wagner (2010, September) and Holtz, Wagner, and
Sartawi (2011) provide some empirical data regarding this question. Holtz
and Wagner (2010, September) analyzed over 6,500 Internet postings by
young Muslims between 2008 and 2009. As expected, they found a great
variety of topics discussed in these forums, reflecting all aspects of daily
life. However, the authors also identified a particular kind of religious fun-
damentalism  – a strong rigid belief  – that was mostly aimed at fighting
against secularity (viewed as dominated by the simple dichotomy between
“good” and “evil”) and referring to divine authority (as found in the Koran).
The need for a militant Jihad was approved, but suicide assassins and terror
against civilian persons were heatedly discussed. Religious fundamental-
ism as a political instrument was well accepted and the creation of a new
identity as true Muslims in contrast to a secular identity was promoted. In
addition, modern, rather secular Muslims were declared to be unbelievers
(takfir, Kuffar).
Holtz et al. (2011) analyzed 966 Internet postings in 45 threads on the
topic of the Swiss minaret ban in 2009. This study revealed two primary
groups of Muslims with opposite positions: one group was fundamentalist
and reactivist (in the Ahlu Sunnah discussion board), and the other was
a moderate and rather secular group (in the Vaybee board). According to
the study authors, the fundamentalists “argue from the position of a ‘total
Moslem identity’” (p. 17). They reject the “domination of Western politics,
economy and cultural products.” They are against building mosques in
Europe “as long as the Western world is at war with Islam … the time for
building will come when Islam has finally won” (p. 13). Their personal iden-
tity has changed very little, and thus differs a great deal from their Western
host culture. Their strong, rigid faith will make living in Western society
more difficult, and they perhaps will become targets for stereotyping and
Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth 59

rejection. This, and their orthodox Islamic faith, will pose severe difficul-
ties for their personality development and future development in Western
society.
The secular participants in the Vaybee board also “identify with their
original nation” (Holtz et al., 2011) and do not really belong to the group
with the hybrid identity (p. 17). They accept living in a foreign country, and
their primary aims are economic success and to take advantage of learn-
ing opportunities. Those who support the construction of minarets show a
stronger identification with Germany, but they fear right-wing extremism
as well as orthodox Islamism. This, and their moderate Islamic faith, will
make their further development in Germany easier.
The difference between the two groups was also expressed in the preva-
lence of mentioning certain topics: typical Islamist terms like Sharia, Kuffar,
and Jihad, as well as the simplifying alternative of good versus evil – ­indicating
little critical thinking – appeared frequently on the Ahlu Sunnah discussion
board but rarely if at all on the Vaybee board. The topics within the Vaybee
discussions often focused on identity and integration into German culture,
probably indicating a successful personality development.

Islam in German Youth


In Germany, some adolescents are disappointed by the perceived decadence
of society. They are not well integrated and therefore, often don’t have con-
ventional friends (see Bukowski et al., 2007). Some of these adolescents are
attracted to Islam, especially by the idea of living according to strict rules
(e.g., fasting, no premarital sex) and allowing their religion to penetrate
their everyday life. In particular for adolescents who are not well integrated
in society or do not have much hope for a better future (such as those who
did not finish school), the strict regulations may provide a sense of security
and purpose. Even the radical principles of the salafistic preachers do not
seem to be a deterrent.
Under these conditions, some young Germans have converted to Islam
and become strong believers. Again, negative consequences of the power
of belief become obvious: some have even joined militant groups fighting
in Afghanistan with the Taliban, others have remained in Germany but
turned into terrorists. Individuals in the “Sauerland group,” for example,
prepared bombs to be exploded in the railway that only by chance failed.
In March 2011, a young man raised in Germany by a moderate Islamic
family was influenced by radical Islamic preachers and Internet films after
failing in school. He became radical, convinced of the necessity to fight for
Islam, and killed two American soldiers in Frankfurt. The motivations of
60 Kornadt

this adolescent and other youths are certainly complex, likely a result of an
amalgam with social problems. Nevertheless, the power of a belief in God
and the other world is certainly part of their motive.

Fundamentalistic Faith in Muslim Arab Youth


The link between radical acts and the power of religious belief is more
clearly drawn when examining young suicide assassins: they certainly are
motivated by an extremely strong belief in the afterlife. Suicide assassins are
mostly young Arab boys, although sometimes girls as well, who have grown
up under desperate conditions. Some are in the third or fourth generation
of refugees from Palestine, and have grown up in the restricted surround-
ings of a refugee camp. Some have little knowledge of the outside world,
others are well educated. Most of them have grown up without hope for a
change in their situation. The social and economic situation in Palestine,
Jordan, and Syria is desolate: one half of the population is younger than
25 years of age and there is no hope for an economic improvement in the
near future. Other youth were educated in one of medresses in Pakistan
(Ladurner, 2008). All were under the influence of radical teachers, who
can be extremely influential (King & Roeser, 2009) and who preach hatred
against infidels and the immoral Western world, which allegedly attempts
to destroy Islam and is responsible for their misfortune and misery. The
immediate symbol of the aggressiveness of Western society is Israel, the
hated enemy. Therefore, aggression is justified as defense as mentioned in
the Koran (i.e., fighters for Islam are rewarded in Paradise). The young boys
or girls learn to devote their life to God as is demanded by the Koran and
some of the Hadiths (e.g., Ahmad al–Qadi, 1977/2006). They often live in
a group with “sacred values” (Ginges & Atran, 2011) and have developed a
collective identity. They, and sometimes their families, can feel a strong con-
formity pressure in their group (Atran, 2010) to fight against the decadent
enemy – the infidels – and for Islam. They are taught that after dying while
fighting for Islam, they can immediately enter Paradise where the Huries
are waiting (Ahmad al–Qadi, 1977/2006, 45, 46, pp. 183–185). Along with
the social pressure, the belief in Allah and the promise of Paradise is so
strong for some youth (Sagemann, 2008) that they are willing to sacrifice
their lives by committing a suicide attack. They often prepare for the recep-
tion in Paradise by settling their debts, praying, fasting, washing, cutting
their hair, and using new or clean underwear (R. Seginer, personal commu-
nication, July 2011). For those who are willing to die as strong believers and
warriors for the true belief, entering Paradise is a temptation and a realistic
expectation.
Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth 61

Here we see the danger of a strong power of a religious belief: we have to


assume a closed mindedness – with all attention focused primarily on the after-
life – where interests in real life are nearly unimportant. This is comparable to
what an elder Christian monk after a long life in the monastery said facing an
ossuary: “For those who consider themselves already dead to the world and
are living for God, leaving this world is easy” (Father Markarios, in Draper,
2009, p. 148). And to die as a young martyr is also easy, like a redemption.

Conclusion
Belief in a caring God can provide adolescents with support and stability
and further their positive development. However, although fundamentalist
beliefs can be accepted in orthodox cultures, these beliefs can lead to serious
difficulties in secular societies. This underlines the importance of cultural fit
in development. Further research is needed on the psychological functions
of spiritual practices (e.g., prayer and meditation) and the development of
religious belief and its consequences for personality development.

Acknowledgments
I thank Rachel Seginer and Holly Bunje for their valuable comments and I
thank Jeanette Ziehm for assistance in editing the manuscript.

References

Ahmad al–Qadi, I. A. R. (1981/2006). Das Totenbuch des Islam / Islamic book of the
dead. (S. Makowski & S. Schuhmacher, Transl.). Frankfurt: S. Fischer (Original
work published 1977).
Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens
through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55, 469–480.
  (2007). Emerging adulthood: What is it, and what is it good for? Child Development
Perspectives, 1, 68–73.
Atran, S. (2010). Talking to the enemy: Faith, brotherhood, and the (un)making of terror-
ists. New York: Harper Collins.
Baer, H. (2009). Jugendreligionen [Religious youth]. In J. Sinabell, H. Baer, H. Gasper, &
J. Müller (Eds.), Lexikon neureligiöser Bewegungen, esoterischer Gruppen und alter-
nativer Lebenshilfen (pp. 108–110). Freiburg: Herder.
Baier, D., Pfeiffer, C., Simonson, J., & Rabold, S. (2009). Jugendliche in Deutschland als
Opfer und Täter von Gewalt [Youth in Germany as delinquents and victims of vio-
lence]. Hannover: Kriminologisches Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen.
Barry, C. M., & Nelson, L. J. (2005). The role of religion in the transition to adulthood for
young emerging adults. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 34, 245–255.
62 Kornadt

Barry, C. M., Nelson, L., Davarya, S., & Urry, S. (2010). Religiosity and spirituality dur-
ing the transition to adulthood. International Journal of Behavioral Development,
34, 311–324.
Bellah, R. (1970). Beyond belief. New York: Harper & Row.
Birgegard, A., & Granqvist, P. (2004). The correspondence between attachment to par-
ents and God: Three experiments using subliminal separation cues. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1122–1135.
Brown, B. B., Larson, R. W., & Saraswathi, T. S. (2002). The world’s youth: Adolescence in
8 regions of the globe. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bukowski, W. M., Brendgen, M., & Vitaro, F. (2007). Peers and socialization: Effects on exter-
nalizing and internalizing problems. In J. E. Grusec & P. D. Hastings (Eds.), Handbook
of socialization: Theory and research (pp. 355–381). New York: Guilford Press.
Busch, W. (1954). Nur was wir glauben, wissen wir gewiss. Der Lebensweg des lachenden
Weisen [Only what we believe do we know with certainty. The life of the smiling
sage]. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt.
Clark, G. (1962). World prehistory. An outline. London, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Côté, J. E. (2009). Identity formation and self-development in adolescence. In R. M.
Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psychology, Vol 1: Individual
bases of adolescent development (3rd ed.) (pp. 266–304). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley
& Sons.
Cunliffe, B. W. (1993). The Celtic world. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Dalai Lama (2005). Die Welt in einem einzigen Atom: Meine Reise durch Wissenschaft
und Buddhismus [The world in a single atom: My journey through science and
Buddhism]. Berlin: Theseus.
Demandt, A. (2005). Die Kelten [The Celts]. München: Beck.
Deutsch, N. L., & Theodorou, E. (2010). Aspiring, consuming, becoming: Youth identity
in a culture of consumption. Youth and Society, 42, 224–254.
Dingfelder, S. F. (2011). Reflecting on narcissism: Are young people more self-obsessed
than ever before? Monitor on Psychology, 42, 64–66. Retrieved from: http://www.
apa.org/monitor/2011/02/narcissism.aspx
Draper, R. (2009). The holy peninsula of Mount Athos. National Geographic, 216,
134–149.
Eccles, J. S. (2007). Families, schools, and developing achievement-related motivations
and engagement. In J. E. Grusec & P. Hastings (Eds.), Handbook of socialization:
Theory and research (pp. 665–691). New York: Guilford.
Elkind, D. (1999). Religious development in adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 22,
291–295.
Emmons, R. A., & Paloutzian, R. F. (2003). The psychology of religion. Annual Review
of Psychology, 54, 377–402.
Farin, K. (2010). Jugendkulturen heute [Youth cultures today]. Politik und Zeitgeschichte,
27, 3–8.
Gagné, I. (2011). Spiritual safety nets and networked faith: The “liquidity” of family and
work under late modernity. Contemporary Japan, 23, 71–92.
Gasper, H. (2009). Das Christentum und seine Ränder. [Christianity and its borders]. In
H. Gasper, H. Baer, J. Sinabell, & J. Müller (Eds.). Lexikon christlicher Kirchen und
Sondergemeinschaften (pp. 9–34). Freiburg: Herder.
Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth 63

Ginges, J., & Atran, S. (2011). The challenge of violent extremism. American Psychologist,
66, 507–519.
Good, M., & Willoughby, T. (2008). Adolescence as a sensitive period for spiritual devel-
opment. Child Development Perspectives, 2, 32–37.
Granqvist, P. (1998). Religiousness and perceived childhood attachment: On the ques-
tion of compensation or correspondence. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
37, 350–367.
  (2002). Attachment and religiosity in adolescence: Cross-sectional and longitudinal
evaluations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 260–270.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. Oxford, UK: Wiley.
Henning, J., & Netter, P. (Eds.). (2005). Biopsychologische Grundlagen der Persönlichkeit
[Biopsychological fundamentals of personality]. München: Elsevier.
Higher Education Research Institute (2003). The spiritual life of college students: A
national study of college students’ search for meaning and purpose. Los Angeles:
University of California Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.
Retrieved from http://spirituality.ucla.edu/docs/reports/Spiritual_Life_College_
Students_Full_Report.pdf
Hölliger, F., & Haller, M. (2009). Decline or persistence of religion? In M. Haller, R.
Jowell, & T. W. Smith (Eds.) The international social survey program, 1984–2009.
London: Routledge.
Holtz, P., & Wagner, W. (2010, September). Religiöser Fundamentalismus 2.0: Ergebnisse
einer Analyse von über 6500 Postings in neun vorwiegend von jungen Muslimen
genutzten deutschsprachigen Internetforen [Religious fundamentalism 2.0: Results
of an analysis of more than 6500 postings in nine German Internet forums, which
are mainly used by young Muslims]. Paper presented at the 47th Congress of the
Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie (DGP’s), Bremen, Germany.
Holtz. P., Wagner, W., & Sartawi, M. (2011). Discrimination and minority identities:
Fundamentalist and secular Muslims facing the Swiss minaret ban. Manuscript sub-
mitted for publication.
Hoskins, J. A. (1989). On losing and getting a head: Warfare, exchange, and alliance in a
changing Sumba, 1888–1988. American Ethnologist, 16, 419–440.
Huber, W. (2010). Das Abendmahl als Lachnummer [The Holy Communion as joke].
Die Zeit, 48. Retrieved from: http://www.zeit.de/2010/48/Sakrileg–Oper
Kary, J. (2011, March). Mehr Studienanfänger in Ingenieurswissenschaften / Immer
längere Ausbildungszeiten [More freshmen for engineering science / Increasing
duration of education]. Markt und Mittelstand. Retrieved from: http://www.­
marktundmittelstand.de/portal/strategie–personal/2078/mehr–studienan-
faenger–in–ingenieurswissenschaften–immer–laengere–ausbildungszeiten/
King, P. D., & Roeser, R. W. (2009). Religion and spirituality in adolescent development.
In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psychology (3rd ed.,
pp. 435–478). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
King, P. E., & Furrow, J. L. (2004). Religion as a source for positive youth develop-
ment: Religion, social capital, and moral outcomes. Developmental Psychology, 40,
703–713.
Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1990). Attachment theory and religion: Childhood
attachments, religious beliefs, and conversion. Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion, 29, 315–334.
64 Kornadt

Kloft, H. (2010). Mysterienkulte der Antike: Götter, Menschen, Rituale [Mystery cults of
the ancient world: Gods, men, rituals]. München: Beck.
Kornadt, H.-J. (2011). Aggression: Die Rolle der Erziehung in Europa und Ostasien
[Aggression: The role of child rearing in Europe and East Asia]. Wiesbaden: VS
Verlag.
Lademann-Priemer, G. (2009). Eltern-und Betroffenen-Initiativen. [Initiatives of
parents and persons concerned]. In J. Sinabell, H. Baer, H. Gasper, & J. Müller
(Eds.), Lexikon neureligiöser Bewegungen, esoterischer Gruppen und alternativer
Lebenshilfen (pp. 53–55). Freiburg: Herder.
Ladurner, U. (2008). Bitte informieren Sie Allah! Terrornetzwerk Pakistan. [Please inform
Allah! Terror network Pakistan]. München: Herbig.
Lerner, R. M., Roeser, R. W., & Phelps, E., (Eds.). (2008). Positive youth development and
spirituality. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton.
Maier, B. (2008). Sternstunden der Religionen. Von Augustinus bis Zarathustra [Great
moments of religion. From Augustine to Zarathustra]. München: Beck.
McCullough, M. E., & Willoughby, B. L. B. (2009). Religion, self-regulation, and self-
control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135,
69–93.
Mishra, R. C., & Dasen, P. R. (2005). Spatial language and cognitive development in
India: Urban/rural comparison. In W. Friedlmeier, P. Chakkarath, & B. Schwarz
(Eds.), Culture and human development (pp. 31–51). New York: Psychology Press.
Müller, K. E. (2006). Schamanismus: Heiler, Geister, Rituale [Shamanism: Healers, spirits,
rituals]. München: Beck.
Nordbruch, G. (2010). Islamische Jugendkulturen in Deutschland [Islamic youth cul-
tures in Germany]. Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 27, 34–38.
Pargament, K. I. (2002). The bitter and the sweet: An evaluation of the costs and benefits
of religiousness. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 168–181.
Patterson, C. J., & Hastings, P. D. (2007). Socialization in the context of family diver-
sity. In J. E. Grusec & P. D. Hastings (Eds.), Handbook of socialization: Theory and
research (pp. 328–351). New York: Guilford.
Roeser, R., Lerner, R., & Phelps, E. (Eds.). (2008). On the study of spirituality and devel-
opment during adolescence. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton.
Rosenblitt, J. C., Soler, H., Johnson, S. E., & Quadagno, D. M. (2001). Sensation seeking
and hormones in men and women: Exploring the link. Hormones and Behavior,
40, 396–402.
Rothbaum, F., & Trommsdorff, G. (2007). Do roots and wings oppose or complement
one another? The socialization of autonomy and relatedness in cultural context. In
J. E. Grusec & P. Hastings (Eds.), The handbook of socialization (pp. 461–489). New
York: Guilford.
Sagemann, M. (2008). Leaderless Jihad: Terror-networks in the twenty-first century.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Seginer, R. (2008). Future orientation in times of thread and challenge: How resilient
adolescents construct their future. International Journal of Behavioral Development,
32, 272–282.
  (2009). Future orientation. Developmental and ecological perspectives. New York:
Springer.
Psychological Functions of Religion in Youth 65

Sherrod, L. R., & Spiewak, G. (2008). Assessing spiritual development in relation to


civic and moral development during adolescence. In R. Roeser, R. Lerner, & E.
Phelps (Eds.), On the study of spirituality and development during adolescence (pp.
322–338). West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton.
Sinabell, J. (2009). Wandel und Bedeutung von Religion – über die Zunahme der Zahl
religiöser Gruppen und den Verlust ihres gesellschaftlichen Einflusses [Change and
meaning of religion – About the increase of religious groups and the loss of their
societal influence]. In J. Sinabell, H. Baer, H. Gasper, & J. Müller (Eds.), Lexikon
neureligiöser Bewegungen, esoterischer Gruppen und alternativer Lebenshilfen (pp.
9–26). Freiburg: Herder.
Smith, C., & Lundquist Denton, M. (2005). Soul searching: The religious and spiritual
lives of American teenagers. New York: Oxford University Press.
Spilka, B., Hood, I. R. W., Hunsberger, B., & Gorsuch, R. (2003). Religious socialization
and thought in adolescence and young adulthood. In B. Spilka, I. R. W. Hood, B.
Hunsberger, & R. Gorsuch (Eds.), The psychology of religion (pp. 106–147). New
York: Guilford.
Statistisches Bundesamt (2011). Diagnose Alkoholmissbrauch: 2,8% mehr junge
Krankenhauspatienten im Jahr 2009 [Diagnosis alcohol abuse: About 2.8% more
young hospital patients in 2009]. Pressemitteilung, 39. Retrieved from: http://www.
destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/DE/Presse/pm/2011/01/P
D11__039__231,templateId=renderPrint.psml
Steenwyk, S. A. M., Atkins, D. C., Bedics, J. D., & Whitley, B. E., Jr. (2010). Images of
God as they relate to life satisfaction and hopelessness. International Journal for the
Psychology of Religion, 20, 85–96.
Steinberg, L. (2005). Cognitive and affective development in adolescence. Trends in cog-
nitive sciences, 9, 69–74.
Süss, J. (2009). Kinder Gottes/die Familie [Children of God/the family]. In J. Sinabell, H.
Baer, H. Gasper, & J. Müller (Eds.), Lexikon neureligiöser Bewegungen, esoterischer
Gruppen und alternativer Lebenshilfen (pp. 115–116). Freiburg: Herder.
Trommsdorff, G. (2012). Development of agentic regulation in cultural context: The role
of self and world views. Child Development Perspectives, 6, 19–26.
Urry, H. L., & Poey, A. P. (2008). How religious/spiritual practices contribute to well-
being. In R. M. Lerner, R. W. Roeser, & E. Phelbs (Eds.), Positive youth development
and spirituality (pp. 145–163). West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton.
Valentin, F., & Gasper, H. (2009). Sekten [Sects]. In J. Gasper, H. Baer, J. Sinabell, &
J. Müller (Eds.), Lexikon Christlicher Kirchen und Sondergemeinschaften (pp. 207–
212). Freiburg: Herder.
Wahle, E. (1973). Ur– und Frühgeschichte im mitteleuropäischen Raum [Prehistory and
ancient history in central Europe]. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.
Winkler, J. (1925). Die Toba–Batak auf Sumatra in gesunden und kranken Tagen [The
Toba–Batak in Sumatra in healthy and sick days]. Stuttgart: Belfer.
Winstedt, R. (1982). The Malay magician. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wundt, W. (1926). Völkerpsychologie. Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von
Sprache, Mythus und Sitte. Band 4: Mythus und Religion [Ethnopsychology. A study
of the developmental rules of language, myth, and convention. Edition 4: Myth and
religion]. Leipzig: Kröner Verlag.
3 Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness in
Adolescence Pathways to Spiritual Awareness

Fred Rothbaum, Yan Z. Wang, and Dov Cohen

Abstract
Self-awareness increases dramatically for adolescents worldwide. We seek
to understand how cultural differences in self-awareness may contribute to
cultural differences in spiritual awareness among adolescents. The focus is
on comparisons between European-Americans and East Asians. There is
little research on cultural differences in self-awareness, despite substantial
evidence of cultural differences in its key components: (1) the vantage point
of awareness – whether it is a first person perspective, from the inside-out
(European-Americans) or a third person perspective, from the outside-in
(East Asians); (2) the conception of self and of standards – whether self is
seen as relatively independent and standards are based on personal desires
and ideals (European-Americans) or self is seen as interdependent and
standards are based on social obligations and norms (East Asians); and (3)
the nature of self-evaluation – whether it is focused on enhancing esteem
(European-Americans) or maintaining face (East Asians). We suggest
that self-awareness may activate mortality salience and thereby may elicit
cultural worldviews. Cultural differences in self-awareness leads to differ-
ent spiritualities that present different “worldview” defenses against the
existential concerns engendered by the interaction of self-awareness and
mortality salience. Salvation through prayer and through good deeds, and
approval from a loving God, common in Christianity, alleviate European-
Americans’ mortality concerns. By contrast, meditation, self change, and
unity with the universe, common in Buddhism, alleviate East Asians’ mor-
tality concerns.
We begin with two quotes. The first is from Herman Hesse’s (2008) power-
ful and lyrical novel Siddhartha. The novel concerns a young man’s search
for self-discovery in the time of the Buddha. Prior to the Buddha’s enlight-
enment, his name was Siddhartha:

66
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 67

Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: “But what is this,
what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers, and what
they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?” And he found:
“It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the
self I wanted to free myself from, which I sought to overcome. But I was not
able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from
it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very
own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated
and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha!” (“Awakening,” para. 3)

Siddhartha’s awareness of the self and his desire to overcome that aware-
ness is, we suggest, a first step in his journey to spirituality. This notion is
clearly and succinctly captured by Ho and Ho (2007) in their very thought-
ful review of the literature on spirituality: “Awareness of one’s existence does
not qualify as an essential aspect of spirituality; awareness of that awareness
does. A spiritual person is aware of not only his existence, but also aware
that he is aware of it; he is, furthermore, capable of contemplating the fright-
ful consequences of losing his self awareness or even his being” (p. 69).
Building on these ideas, we claim that the common denominator of
diverse forms of spirituality is awareness of a higher order existence that
is rooted in self-consciousness and is liberated from secular concerns.
According to Hart & Goldenberg (2007, p.104), “societies in the east and
west have made sense of humans’ self conscious nature in ways that triv-
ialize the body and glorify the spiritual self. All spiritual systems of belief
focus on a nonmaterial realm that is essentially infinite and eternal.”
Spiritual awareness is poorly understood in part because the research
that helps clarify it is located in relatively segregated literatures. The ques-
tions raised in this chapter are alternately developmental, cultural, and
social psychological in nature and almost always spiritual: (1) Why does
spirituality increase markedly in adolescence? (2) Why are there cultural
differences in spirituality? and (3) Why does mortality salience lead to
increases in spirituality?
Echoing Ho and Ho (2007), we suggest that the answers to these three
questions center on self-awareness. To support this claim, we review evi-
dence that: (1) self-awareness increases dramatically for adolescents world-
wide, (2) cultural differences in spirituality – between Christians’ focus on
God’s approval of self on one hand and Buddhists’ focus on transcending
self (embracing non-self) on the other hand  – reflect differences in self-
awareness, and (3) mortality salience leads to spiritual awareness because it
leads to changes in the nature of self-awareness.
68 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

The chapter is divided into five sections: First, we examine basic exper-
imental research on self-awareness, almost all of which was conducted by
Western investigators. Second, we examine the development of self-aware-
ness, focusing on three aspects. Third, we consider cultural differences in
those three aspects of self-awareness, as well as cultural differences in the
broader construct. Fourth, we consider how self-awareness fosters mortal-
ity salience, and how mortality salience strengthens worldviews, especially
spiritual ones. Fifth and finally, we draw from the above research to explain
how cultural differences in spiritual awareness, as seen in Christianity and
Buddhism, reflect cultural differences in self-awareness.

Experimental Studies of Self-Awareness


There are over 100 studies indicating that, following failure, people who are
made self-aware are more likely to compare their behavior to standards, and
to experience a variety of negative consequences of those comparisons, par-
ticularly negative emotion and negative self-evaluations. As a result, people
seek ways to avoid self-awareness and/or its negative consequences (Duval &
Silvia, 2002), especially when social rejection is possible (Twenge, Catanese,
& Baumeister, 2003). Failure is a critical factor in these studies – following
success, people who are made self-aware experience it is as positive (because
they have exceeded standards) and seek to maintain self-awareness rather
than to escape it (Duval & Wicklund, 1972). The self-awareness research is
much more concerned with failure than success because self-awareness is
usually triggered by disruptions in the ongoing flow of behavior and dis-
ruptions are more commonly associated with failure. Self-awareness is typ-
ically induced by situating people in front of a mirror, instructing them to
write about themselves, or arranging for them to be observed by an audi-
ence (Duval & Silvia, 2002; Wiekens & Stapel, 2010).
Because self-awareness following failure is aversive, various strategies
are adopted to lessen it. These strategies involve avoiding the source of
self-awareness (e.g., others’ gaze or reminders of the self) and distracting
attention away from the self (e.g., through sensation seeking or de-individ-
uation – focusing attention on mindless activities and decreasing attention
to distinctive aspects of self) (Rothbaum et al., 1982). Other strategies are
aimed at lessening self-awareness’s aversive consequences, particularly the
low self-evaluations that follow from self-awareness. For example, follow-
ing self-awareness, people derogate the unattainable goal (Brehm, Wright,
Solomon, Silka, & Greenberg, 1983), they pursue substitute goals that they
are better able to attain (Wicklund & Gollwitzer, 1982), and they attribute
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 69

negative outcomes to external forces and attribute positive outcomes to the


self (Duval & Silvia, 2002). These strategies are especially common when
improvement in performance is unlikely, a circumstance that sustains self-
awareness and its negative effects.
Not all strategies are equal in their ability to alleviate negative self-
­evaluations. Findings from diverse literatures including coping (Creswell,
Lam, Stanton, Taylor, Bower, & Sherman, 2007; Wachholtz & Pearce,
2009), positive psychology (Fredrickson, 2004), terror management
theory (Dechesne et al., 2003; Schimel, Landau, & Hayes, 2008), the self
(Baumeister, 1987, 2010; Leary, Adams, & Tate, 2006), and mindfulness
(Brown & Ryan, 2003; Walach, Buchheld, Buttenmüller, Kleinknecht, &
Schmidt, 2006) indicate that spirituality provides a particularly effective
avenue for preserving and protecting self-evaluations. The effectiveness of
spirituality is partly because of its affirmation of the self and partly because
of its redirection of attention away from self-awareness and self-judgment
and toward awareness of others, compassion, and non-judgment.
Although research on self-awareness has overwhelmingly been con-
ducted by Western investigators and with Western samples, there is rea-
son to believe that similar phenomena pertain to East Asians. They, too,
respond to awareness of their failures with decreased self-evaluations and
with efforts to elevate their evaluations, although the nature of their efforts
differs. Rather than seeking positive self-evaluations “candidly,” publicly,
and for purposes of self-advancement, they are more likely to seek positive
self-evaluations “tactically,” privately, and for purposes of self-protection
(Sedikides & Gregg, 2008; see also Heine & Hamamura, 2007). According
to Heine (2001), East Asians are more likely to seek self-improvement
whereas European-Americans are more likely to seek self-enhancement.
Although the nature of self-evaluation striving varies in important ways
across community, our point is that all people seek to bolster evaluations
of self when made aware of their failure to achieve standards (Heine,
Takemoto, Moskalenko, Lasaleta, & Henrich, 2008; Kim, 2009; Lalwani,
Shrum, & Chiu, 2009).

Development of Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is a process that evolves throughout childhood (Damon &
Hart, 1982). It begins with recognition of the physical self in infancy and
progresses to a “theory of mind” in early childhood. Theory of mind refers
to children’s understanding of their own and other individuals’ mental
states. It involves the ability to consider the perspective of others and to
70 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

make judgments from that perspective even when it differs from one’s own
perspective. There is considerable cross-cultural synchrony in the develop-
mental sequence, if not the exact age, at which children gain facility with
various theory of mind tasks such as those involving awareness that the
self can hold false beliefs (Callaghan et al., 2005; Liu, Wellman, Tardif, &
Sabbagh, 2008; Sabbagh, Xu, Carlson, Moses, & Lee, 2006).
Children’s knowledge about mental representations continues to increase
during middle childhood (Hughes & Leekam, 2004). Developments rel-
evant to self-awareness include understanding second-order beliefs (e.g.,
John thinks that Mary thinks that…”; Perner & Wimmer, 1985); the role of
pre-existing biases and expectations in influencing decisions (Carpendale
& Chandler, 1996; Chandler, Sokol, & Hallett, 2001; Pillow & Henrichon,
1996); deception (Happé, 1994); and mixed and ambivalent emotions
(Harris, Johnson, Hutton, Andrews, & Cooke, 1989). Particularly relevant
to spiritual awareness is the finding that prior to age eight, children do not
understand that prayer is often in response to negative emotions and that
praying can improve emotions (Bamford & Lagattuta, 2010).
According to Flavell (1999), there is a marked increase during adoles-
cence in the ability to see the self and others as actively interpreting rather
than as passively responding to the environment. Adolescents realize
that divergent, even conflicting, intentions and views about the self arise
because people are multidimensional and context-dependent (Oosterwegel
& Oppenheimer, 2002; Proulx & Chandler, 2009). Adolescents’ increases in
perspective taking and in understanding of mind (Epley, Keysar, Van Boven,
& Gilovich, 2004; Guroglu, van den Bos, & Crone, 2009; see also research
on “mind mindedness,” Demers, Bernier, Tarabulsy, & Provost, 2010; Meins
et al., 2003) may reflect growth in brain regions that are implicated in social
cognition (Choudhury, Blakemore, & Charman, 2006). Increased per-
spective taking from ages 8–36, evidenced by the ability to rapidly switch
between a first and third person perspective, has been linked to the devel-
opment of brain regions presumed to control that ability (Choudhury et al.,
2006).
Perhaps the crowning achievement of adolescent cognitive development
is the ability to habitually think about thought – to regularly take one’s own
thought as an object of reflection (Elkind, 1985; Inhelder & Piaget, 1958).
This achievement, which is elaborated throughout adolescence (Bacow,
Pincus, Ehrenreich, & Brody, 2009; Enright, Shukla, & Lapsley, 1980;
Sauter, Heyne, Blote, van Widenfelt, & Westenberg, 2010), makes possi-
ble the “awareness of the awareness of one’s existence” emphasized by Ho
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 71

and Ho (2007, p. 69). There are several components to this achievement,


including: (1) recognition of the distinction between psychological-mental
aspects of self and physical-observable aspects; (2) understanding of self ’s
agency to monitor and manipulate experience; (3) awareness of limitations
in the knowability of self, including awareness of the unconscious; and (4)
concern with coherence between aspects of self – for example, between pre-
sent and past, between public and private, and between morality and desires
(Broughton, 1978; Choudhury et al., 2006; Damon & Hart, 1982; Mazor &
Enright, 1988; Selman, 1980).
Field studies of trick-or-treaters’ behavior during Halloween demon-
strate the age related nature of self-awareness (Beaman, Klentz, Diener, &
Svanum, 1979). Self-awareness induced by the presence of a mirror placed
behind a candy bowl decreased cheating behavior for children who had
been individuated by asking them their name and address, but did not
affect the behavior of children left anonymous. These effects were clearly
demonstrated for adolescents, but were not evident in children five to eight
years old. The authors conclude, “by ages 9–12, self awareness has an effect
in reducing transgressions, and by 13 and above self awareness substan-
tially reduces antinormative behaviour” (p. 1842). Although we are not
aware of a similar study in other cultures, recent neuroimaging research
demonstrates that activity in brain regions associated with self-processing,
including the medial prefrontal cortex, changes between early adoles-
cence and adulthood. These studies indicate that neurocognitive devel-
opment might contribute to increases in adolescent self-consciousness
(Dosch, Loenneker, Bucher, Martin, & Klaver, 2010; Sebastian, Burnett,
& Blakemore, 2008). At the same time, there is evidence that culture can
influence how the self is construed on a neural level. For example, for East
Asians as compared to European-Americans, thoughts of an intimate
other are more likely to activate brain areas associated with self-awareness
(Heatherton, 2011)
Developments in children’s self-awareness, particularly in their under-
standing of mind, result from both brain maturation, such as develop-
ments in neurological functioning responsible for executive functioning,
and social conditions (Liu et al., 2008). In communities where perspective
taking is more emphasized and practiced, such as China, adolescents and
adults may engage in more pervasive and effortless perspective taking (Wu
& Keysar, 2007). The ability to be self-aware makes self-awareness possible
but does not determine its incidence or form. To better understand the lat-
ter issues, we turn next to research on cultural differences.
72 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

Culture and Self-Awareness


Culture and the Elements of Self-Awareness
Although adolescents in all communities become self-aware, what self-
awareness means to them is not the same. We examine three closely inter-
related aspects of self awareness  – the vantage point of awareness, the
conception of self, and the nature of self-evaluation – and developmental
and cultural differences in each.
First, there are differences in perspective. The self can be viewed from
the vantage point of a generalized other or from one’s own vantage point
(Cohen, Hoshino-Browne, & Leung, 2007). In general, East Asians more
often take a generalized other’s perspective and view themselves as would
a third party, whereas European-Americans more often take their own
naïve perspective on the world. The greater adoption of a generalized oth-
er’s perspective by East Asians than European-Americans is seen in their
greater focus on obligations, social roles, self-effacement, and group con-
trol, and their lesser emphasis on individual choice, personal preferences,
self-enhancement, and personal control. The greater adoption of one’s
own personal perspective by European-Americans explains the opposite
pattern. Because of East Asians’ greater emphasis on a generalized other’s
perspective, there is more socialization pressure to adopt that perspective
earlier in childhood. Findings indicate that East Asian, as compared to U.S.
children, take a generalized other’s perspective at an earlier age, and more
effortlessly, than children in the United States (Cohen et al., 2007; Epley
et al., 2004). Chinese as compared to U.S. adults show greater awareness
of others’ perspective, presumably reflecting exposure to cultural beliefs
and practices that promote other-orientation and that provide the tools
necessary to automatically interpret actions from the perspective of others
(Wu & Keysar, 2007).
Second, there are differences in conceptions of self and the standards
that define the self. The self can be construed as independent or interdepen-
dent and can be compared to self ’s own standards or to others’ standards
(Markus & Kitayama, 1991). East Asians more often view themselves as
interdependent and compare themselves to others’ standards and obliga-
tions, whereas European-Americans more often view themselves as inde-
pendent and compare themselves to their own desires, standards, and
personal ideals. Because adults in East Asian and other collectivistic com-
munities are more focused on, and place greater value on, social obligations
than personal preferences and personally-endorsed standards, they social-
ize their children to do the same, beginning at young ages (Greenfield,
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 73

Keller, Fuligni, & Maynard, 2003; Rothbaum, Pott, Azuma, Miyake, &
Weisz, 2000). In European-American communities, early childhood is seen
as a time to cultivate personal preferences and self-distinctiveness. In East
Asian and other collectivistic communities, there is much less emphasis on
these early expressions of individualism. Instead, there is relatively greater
emphasis on fostering young children’s adherence to role expectations,
social norms, and authority (Greenfield et al., 2003; Rothbaum et al., 2000;
Rothbaum & Trommsdorff, 2007).
Third, there are differences in evaluation. Self-evaluation can take the
form of face, which is conferred by others (I am what you think I am) and
is reciprocal – others’ obligation to confer face to self relates to self ’s obliga-
tion to confer face to others. Alternately, self-evaluation can take the form
of self-esteem, which is conferred by self (I am what I think I am, not what
you think I am) and is one-way – conferring esteem to self does not require
conferring esteem to others (Heine, 2001; Kim & Cohen, 2010).
East Asians are more concerned with face and European-Americans are
more concerned with self-esteem. There is greater emphasis on, elabora-
tion of, and earlier use of face concepts in Chinese children (Wu, 2009)
and on self-esteem in U.S. children (Miller et al., 2001). Chinese children
are aware at an earlier age than U.S. children that people sometimes pres-
ent misleading information about themselves (Heyman, Fu, & Lee, 2007).
In European-American communities, caregivers emphasize the importance
of fostering children’s positive view of themselves, and they seek to instill
such views through the use of praise. In East Asian and other collectivistic
communities, there is much less emphasis on developing a positive self-
evaluation (Rothbaum et al., 2000). Indeed, too positive a view of self is dis-
couraged and self-criticism is valued at least as much as caregivers’ praise
(Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997; Miller, Sandel,
Liang, & Fung, 2001; Miller, Wang, Sandel, & Chao, 2002; Wang, Wiley, &
Chiu, 2008). Modesty and humility are more likely to foster a concern with
face than are pride and self-confidence (Kitayama et al., 1997).
Differences in evaluation relate to the differences in perspective and con-
ception of self. In a self-focused condition, the more people have an inde-
pendent conception of self, the greater their self-deceptive enhancement,
which relates to self-esteem concerns. In the same (self-focused) condition,
the more people have an interdependent conception of self, the greater their
impression management, which relates to face concerns (Lalwani & Shavitt,
2009).
Cultural differences in perspective, in conception of self and self ’s stan-
dards, and in evaluation, which are fostered in early childhood, become
74 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

greater as children mature. By adolescence there are well-established cultural


differences in all three aspects of self-awareness. That is, self ’s viewpoint,
self ’s conceptions, and evaluation of self are very different for adolescents
and adults in East Asian as compared to European-American communities
(Chiu, Gelfand, Yamagishi, Shteynberg, & Wan, 2010; Kitayama & Imada,
2010;).

Culture and Effects of Self-Awareness


Surprisingly, there is very little research directly addressing cultural differ-
ences in self-awareness. Even the research cited in the last section is not
focused on the larger phenomenon of self-awareness; it only examines
aspects of the larger phenomenon. Self-awareness comes in two forms  –
public and private. Private self-awareness refers to what I think about
myself and is induced by manipulations such as mirrors or autobiographi-
cal descriptions. Public self-awareness refers to what others think about
me and is induced by manipulations such as the presence of an audience
(Baumeister, 2010; Froming, Walker, & Lopyan, 1982; Pham, Goukens,
Lehmann, & Stuart, 2010; Wiekens & Stapel, 2010).
There are a few recent, landmark demonstrations of cultural differences
in self-awareness. In one, Heine et al. (2008) used a mirror to increase
self-awareness. Prior research indicates that self-awareness manipulations
involving mirrors induce at least as much private as public self-awareness
(Froming et al., 1982; Pham et al., 2010; Scheier & Carver, 1980; Shavitt,
Swann, Lowrey, & Wanke, 1992). In private self-awareness, the eyes of
the self are on the self. Heine et al.’s mirror manipulation led Americans
to become more socially conforming – self-critical and unlikely to cheat –
consequences similar to those reported in earlier studies. On the other
hand, increasing self-awareness via the mirror had no effect on Japanese.
Assuming that the mirror induced primarily private (versus public) self-
awareness, Japanese may not have been influenced by the mirror because
any increased private self-awareness is of less relevance to them. Just the
opposite is true of Americans – they are highly influenced by private self-
awareness because of their concern with self-esteem. Private self-awareness
is not the default state for Americans, but the effects of inducing private
self-awareness are likely to be much greater for them than for Japanese
(Lalwani et al., 2009).
Also relevant to self-awareness is research by Kitayama, Snibbe, Markus,
and Suzuki (2004) in which participants were situated in front of a set
of schematic faces  – pictures of people looking back at them. The pres-
ence as compared to the absence of schematic faces primed differences
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 75

in awareness that the eyes of others are on the self, that is, face concerns.
This increase in public self-awareness (how others see me) led Japanese
to demonstrate greater concern about the consistency of their attitudes
and behaviors (e.g., to demonstrate greater dissonance reduction effects).
However, an increase in public self-awareness had no such effect on
European-Americans and, in a more recent study, it had the opposite effect
on them (Imada & Kitayama, 2010). European-Americans justified their
choices less when the eyes of schematic others were on them than when
others’ eyes were not on them, presumably because they felt constrained by
others and did not seek to defend choices they made under external pres-
sure. They are more invested in choices they see as free and as springing
from the authentic self.
Similar cultural differences were observed when the social eyes prim-
ing method was used to examine how hard people work (Na & Kitayama,
2010). Task performance was much better when the task had been chosen
in the absence of the social eyes priming than in the presence of such prim-
ing for European-Americans, but the pattern was reversed for Asians (i.e.,
Koreans) and Asian-Americans, suggesting that Americans work harder on
a task that is chosen in private, but Asians work harder on a task that is
chosen in public or, at least, when public self-awareness is raised. Because
participants were seemingly not conscious of the social eyes priming
manipulation, these effects are most likely caused by unconscious processes
(Imada & Kitayama, 2010).
It is important to note that Americans justify choices more than the
Japanese when others are not made salient (Kitayama et al., 2004). Several
studies indicate that Americans are especially invested in choices they
make in private (Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008; Savani, Markus, Naidu,
Kumar, & Berlia, 2010). Findings from these studies as well as from the
studies by Kitayama, Heine, and their colleagues are consistent with our
interpretation that private, as compared to public, self-awareness may be of
greater concern to, and have greater effects on, European-Americans than
East Asians.
Related findings are reported in the literature on public versus private
“self-consciousness”  – a close cousin of self-awareness (Lalwani et al.,
2009). Collectivists, such as Japanese, are high on impression management,
which is consistent with their face concerns. Collectivists’ efforts to mold
others’ impressions of themselves are linked to their public self-conscious-
ness. By contrast, individualists, such as Americans, are relatively low on
impression management and high on self-deceptive enhancement, which
is consistent with self-esteem concerns. When they are high in private
76 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

s­ elf-consciousness, people have greater awareness of themselves and real-


istic understandings of their skills and capabilities, and are less prone to
self-deceptive enhancement (Lalwani et al., 2009). These findings, as well
as those previously reported, suggest that a) the form of self-awareness that
most influences East Asians’ behavior is predominantly public in nature
and levels of public self-awareness tends to be chronically high for them
(as compared to levels found in other cultures); and b) the form of self-
awareness that most influences European-Americans’ behavior is predom-
inantly private in nature and levels of private self-awareness tend not to be
chronically high for them.

From Self-Awareness to Spiritual Worldviews: The Role


of Mortality Salience
Self-awareness is closely related to mortality salience (Silvia & Duval,
2001). Mortality is salient when people are acutely aware – consciously
or unconsciously  – of the inevitability and finality of death. Mortality
salience is typically induced by explicitly or implicitly bringing to mind
participants’ death-relevant thoughts, for example, by writing about
death or embedding death-related words in a cover task (Pyszczynski,
Abdollahi, Solomon, Greenberg, Cohen, & Weise, 2006). According to
terror management theory, cultural worldviews, and particularly spiritual
worldviews, serve as a buffer against the anxiety that results from aware-
ness of human mortality (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986;
Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991). The theory maintains that
protection from anxiety requires that one achieve a sense of value or self-
esteem within the cultural context. Security derives from a belief in the
validity of the cultural worldview and its standards, which transcend the
individual’s lifetime, as well as from a belief that one is meeting or exceed-
ing those standards.
Mortality salience is rooted in self-awareness. “It is the uniquely human
capacity to be self aware … that reveals to us our vulnerability and mortal-
ity – to know that we exist is to know that one day we will not exist” (Arndt,
Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1998, p. 1216). Self-awareness
manipulations such as situating people in front of a mirror or having them
write about themselves lead to increased mortality salience (Silvia, 2001).
Stated simply, “Self awareness alone can induce mortality salience” (p. 73).1
To the extent that self-awareness induces mortality salience, it also induces
defenses against the anxiety that accompanies mortality salience – that is,
it induces cultural worldviews and particularly spiritual worldviews (Jonas
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 77

& Fischer, 2006; Koole & Van den Berg, 2004; Silvia, 2001; Solomon et al.,
1991; Vail et al., 2010).
The above findings indicate that self-awareness can, but does not always,
elicit cultural worldviews. The pathway from self-awareness to cultural
worldviews is moderated by mortality salience (Mandel & Smeesters, 2008).
Worded otherwise, people are likely to come to embrace cultural worldviews
as a response to being self-aware and having their own mortality highly
salient to them. Both conditions (self-awareness and mortality salience) are
likely when people are exposed to events that disrupt the ongoing flow of
behavior (prompting comparison to standards) and that threaten one’s way
of life – a serious illness or injury, a significant loss, failure, or rejection, or
events that threaten to undermine deeply held beliefs or values.
Spiritual and religious beliefs are frequently relied upon worldviews,
especially when mortality is salient (Greenberg et al., 1990; Vail et al., 2010).
Spiritual worldviews are particularly well suited to mitigate death anxiety
because they are all encompassing, rely on concepts that are not easily
disconfirmed, and promise literal immortality (Vail et al., 2010). Spiritual
worldviews provide an antidote to concerns about self ’s non-­existence
by preserving “life in a symbolic and indirect manner” (Pyszczynski,
Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999, p. 838). A belief in larger forces that are eter-
nal, that transcend the self, and to which self is connected, serves to (a)
extend the meaning of one’s existence and (b) extend one’s personal exis-
tence (e.g., through one’s immortal soul, in Christianity). In addition to
promising an afterlife and supernatural agency, Christian spiritual world-
views typically entail belief in human ascension from nature, and spiritual
distinctions between mind and body (Vail et al., 2010). There are hundreds
of studies supporting the thesis that reminders of death increase people’s
advocacy of worldviews that reinforce their sense of themselves as worthy
members of a meaningful universe, rather than as mere animals fated only
for obliteration (Greenberg, Sullivan, Kosloff, & Solomon, 2006).
Whereas spiritual and other cultural worldviews are most often sought
under threat, terror management theory explicitly claims that worldviews
are pursued even when threats are not salient. Worldviews provide a gen-
eral reservoir of protection against chronic anxiety associated with ongoing
awareness of the inevitability of death. “Even when people are not con-
sciously thinking about death and external events are not drawing attention
back to this problem, the pursuit of self-esteem and faith in one’s worldview
are ongoing endeavors that function to protect them from implicit knowl-
edge of their ultimate fate” (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, &
Schimel, 2004, p. 437). People’s knowledge of their existence, and of their
78 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

ultimate fate, is owing to their self-awareness. Ultimately, then, it is self-


awareness that underlies motivation for spiritual worldviews.

Culture and Spiritual Worldviews


Several studies indicate that the effects of mortality salience on cultural
worldviews are manifested by East Asians as well as by European-Americans:
following threats to mortality, East Asians uphold cultural worldviews and
the standards associated with them because those worldviews, and fulfill-
ment of their standards, increase self-esteem and thereby defend against
death anxiety (e.g., Heine, Hahihara, & Niiya, 2002; Kashima, Halloran,
Yuki, & Kashima, 2004; Tam, Chiu, & Lau, 2007; Wakimoto, 2006). One
meta-analysis supports this conclusion (Burke, Martens, & Faucher, 2010)
whereas another meta-analysis, relying mainly on unpublished studies,
does not (Yen & Cheng, 2010).
The inconsistent findings may be because of cultural differences in the
relationship between affirming worldviews and self-esteem. For European-
Americans, affirming worldviews in the face of death anxiety serves to
increase self-esteem. For East Asians, however, affirming worldviews in the
face of death anxiety has very different effects, including self-­effacement
(Wakimoto, 2006), acceptance of fate (Yen & Cheng, 2010), and positive
in-group evaluations as opposed to self-evaluations (Tam et al., 2007;
Wakimoto, 2006). Across diverse cultures, affirming worldviews reduces
anxiety associated with mortality salience by increasing self ’s security, but
the nature of self ’s security differs. Differences in security (e.g., increased
self-esteem versus maintaining face) that follow from affirming worldviews
are likely to reflect differences in the worldviews themselves (e.g., empha-
sizing individualism and free choice versus collectivism and resignation to
fate) (Yen & Cheng, 2010).

European-American and East Asian Spiritual Worldviews


Christianity is the major spiritual worldview in many European-American
communities, and Buddhism is the major spiritual worldview in many
East Asian communities (United States Department of State, 2004). A
consideration of differences between these spiritual worldviews paves the
way for a deeper understanding of how they parallel differences in self-
awareness.
First, however, we wish to highlight fundamental similarities between
diverse spiritual worldviews, including Buddhism and Christianity. Both
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 79

traditions entail a belief in an existence after death and a higher being


(Buddha and Jesus/God) who points the way toward transcendence and
salvation. Both traditions value reflection/contemplation (meditation and
prayer) and good/virtuous action. The principles of goodness and virtue
in both traditions involve reciprocity, justice, charity, consideration, love
of others (Ekman, Davidson, Ricard, & Wallace, 2005; Haidt, 2006; Smith,
1991; Tsai, Miao, & Seppala, 2007), and gratitude (McCullough, Emmons,
& Tseng, 2002). Both traditions preach the importance of self-control and
responsible action, and prescribe exercises for pursuing them (McCullough
& Willoughby, 2009; Rachlin, 2000; see also similarities noted by Tsai et
al., 2007). Because spiritual worldviews serve as a defense against mortal-
ity salience and because concerns about mortality are similar across cul-
ture, it is not surprising that there are cross-cultural similarities in spiritual
worldviews.
The differences between Christian and Buddhist spiritual worldviews are
also fundamental. Perhaps the major difference is that anxiety about death
leads Christians to seek approval of and alignment with God, whereas anxi-
ety about death leads Buddhists to seek a state of non-self and oneness with
the universe. A related difference is that Jesus/God is an omnipotent deity
whereas Buddha is not a deity. Buddhist sects differ in whether or not they
recognize deities, but none recognize a single, omnipotent deity. Another
major difference is that Christianity is about reaching heaven in the afterlife
through faith and good deeds, whereas Buddhism is about ending suffer-
ing (the endless cycle of re-birth) and achieving enlightenment on earth
through contemplating the nature of reality.

From Spiritual Worldviews to Spiritual Awareness


People adopt the spiritual worldviews prevalent in their community because
of their exposure to those worldviews, often from an early age, and because
of the unity with others that endorsing those worldviews provides. In this
section we suggest that the kinds of spiritual worldviews to which indi-
viduals are receptive, and which best serve to buffer mortality concerns,
are those that are congruent with the type of self-awareness prevalent in
the culture.
We distinguish between spiritual worldviews, a focus of terror manage-
ment theory, and spiritual awareness, our focus in this chapter. We view spir-
itual awareness as lying at the heart of spiritual worldviews – that is, spiritual
awareness is the irreducible core of spiritual worldviews. Spiritual world-
views, which are the subject of prolific tomes, involve issues of creation, the
80 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

Table 3.1.  Aspects of Self- and Spiritual Awareness among European-Americans


and East Asians

Aspect of Self- Self-Awareness Spiritual Awareness


Awareness
European- Perspective Self ’s own private, first- The perspective of
American person perspective an all-powerful
God
Self-Awareness Conception of Self An independent self – a A self that is aligned
(Private Self- self that exists apart with God
Awareness) from its context and is
judged on the basis of its
own standards
Evaluation High or low self-esteem Approval of the self
(by God)
East Asian Perspective Generalized other, public, Common humanity
third-person perspective perspective
Self-Awareness Conception of Self An interdependent self Non-self – self that
(Public Self- that is embedded in is fully integrated
Awareness) relationships and is with others
judged on the basis of
others’ standards
Evaluation Face or lack of face Compassion (not
judging) of self
and others

meaning of life, the afterlife, divinity, salvation, compassion, higher forms of


morality, justice, and love. By contrast, spiritual awareness is a more delim-
ited phenomenon, involving only those elements that define self-awareness:
a perspective, a conception of self and standards, and an evaluation of the
self. Spiritual awareness differs from self-awareness in that all three of these
elements are transcendent  – operating in relation to the spiritual world
rather than the secular one. For parallels between self and spiritual aware-
ness among both European-Americans and East Asians, see Table 3.1.
Despite these parallels, we suspect that spiritual awareness is a later
developing phenomenon than self-awareness. Because self-awareness is
a necessary but not a sufficient ingredient of spiritual awareness, not all
adolescents who become highly self-aware become highly spiritually aware.
Whereas self-awareness is typically triggered by failures and other adverse
events, spiritual awareness is triggered primarily by events that make mor-
tality salient. People who are adept at suppressing concerns about mortality
are unlikely to develop spiritual awareness. Because people are highly moti-
vated to suppress thoughts about salient negative events, especially negative
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 81

events pertaining to the self (Newman, Duff, & Baumeister, 1997; Wenzlaff
& Wegner, 2000), mortality salience, and the spiritual awareness to which it
gives rise, are not frequent experiences for many individuals. This is espe-
cially the case for most youth whose exposure to death is infrequent and
thus more easily suppressed.
As noted earlier, one of the most common ways of overcoming the
adverse effects of death anxiety, and obviating the need for worldview
defenses, is by bolstering self-evaluations (or in-group evaluations). High
levels of self- (and in-group) esteem reduce the likelihood that manipula-
tions of mortality salience will trigger worldview defenses (Pyszczynski et
al., 2004). When self- or in-group esteem is high, spiritual awareness is less
necessary to defend against threats to mortality. The converse is also true:
people high in spiritual awareness are cognizant of forces much larger than
themselves and they have less need for self-esteem as a defense against mor-
tality (Dechesne et al., 2003).

Spiritual Awareness and Self-Awareness in Different Cultures


Judaic-Christian awareness, the dominant form of spiritual awareness among
European-Americans, centers on seeking unity with an omnipotent being.
This form of spiritual awareness arises from changes along the dimensions of
perspective, conception of self, and evaluation – the same three dimensions
that define self-awareness (Lillard et al., 1998). The three changes are:
–– a shift from one’s own perspective (European-Americans’ most common
perspective) to God’s perspective. Importantly, this shift is from a first
person perspective to a third person perspective. That is, the spiritual
awareness of European-Americans in some respects resembles the self-
awareness (i.e., perspective taking) of East Asians more than it resembles
European-Americans’ customary self-awareness (perspective taking).
–– a shift from an independent conception of self to a conceptualization of
self as aligned with a single, personal, all-powerful God. There is a cor-
responding shift from pursuing one’s own desires or one’s personal ideals
to pursuing God’s standards. Unlike Buddha, God is the primary cause of
everything (the creator of the universe), which makes alignment with him
all the more attractive, because it enhances the agency of the aligned self.
–– a decreased concern with self-esteem (European-Americans’ most com-
mon form of self-evaluation) and greater concern with God’s approval
and love. God’s judgment determines one’s fate in the afterlife. Approval
is gained through faith (particularly in Protestantism) and good deeds –
i.e., performing God’s work. Positive judgment leads to eternal existence
82 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

with God in Heaven. Further, as compared to Buddhism, Christianity


places relatively greater emphasis on high intensity positive emotions,
such as ecstasy and rapture, in addition to feelings of peace and content-
ment (Tsai et al., 2007).
Buddhist awareness, the dominant form of spiritual awareness among
East Asians, centers on acceptance of non-self and merging with the uni-
verse. This form of spiritual awareness arises from changes along the same
three dimensions of perspective, conceptions of self and standards, and
evaluation.
–– a shift from an interdependent perspective (the most common perspec-
tive of East Asians) to a greater awareness of common humanity. This
shift is from a conventional third person perspective to a higher order
perspective in which self ’s and others’ perspectives are integrated. An
integration of perspectives results from the dissolution of the boundary
between self and other.
–– a reconceptualization of the notion of interdependence from a sense of
unity with one’s in-group to a sense of deep personal connection with
others. This deep form of connection is characterized by a full embracing
of the thoughts, feelings, and goals of others, merging with the broader
context, and letting go of the illusion of self-hood (that there is a self sep-
arate from everything else). In Buddhism there is no single God. Rather,
divinity is to be found in all things through alignment with a unitary life
force. The emphasis on a common humanity and de-emphasis on the
distinction between self and other, or us and them, reflects the shift away
from a secular notion of collectivism.
–– a decreased concern with face (East Asians’ most common form of self-
evaluation) and greater concern with accepting (not judging) and expe-
riencing compassion for self and others, and gaining enlightenment.
Enlightenment is gained through mindful meditation. Acceptance is
contrasted with the perpetual pursuit of desires which are unfulfillable –
a pursuit that leads to suffering. Acceptance leads to calmness (Tsai et al.,
2007) and an end of suffering. In contrast to Christianity, there is no hell,
but negative karma prolongs samsara (the cycle of birth and re-birth)
and prevents attainment of nirvana.

On the Relationship between Self-Awareness


and Spiritual Awareness
Despite evidence that spiritual awareness is predicated on self-awareness,
the relation between the two is likely to be complex. When self-awareness
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 83

gives rise to spiritual awareness, there is a corresponding decrease in secu-


lar/non-spiritual self-awareness’ presence in consciousness. This process
might be likened to other dynamic processes, such as cognitive dissonance.
Conflicting cognitions lead to uncomfortable feelings of dissonance; this
discomfort motivates people to change their cognitions, which in turn less-
ens the dissonance. Similarly, the discomfort of self-awareness motivates
spiritual awareness, which in turn displaces the self-awareness and negative
emotion that gave rise to it (Leary et al., 2006; also Arndt et al., 1998).
Throughout this chapter we have emphasized the aversiveness of self-
awareness and how it gives rise to defenses such as spiritual awareness. A
seemingly related process, referred to as compensation, is described by
attachment researchers. When the individual determines that an attach-
ment figure is not available or responsive, s/he increases behavior that is
intended to restore adequate proximity and safety. In situations where the
primary attachment figure is persistently unavailable, “the behavior can
become directed towards some substitute object” (Bowlby, 1969, p. 313).
Research by attachment theorists indicates that God can serve as the sub-
stitute attachment object. Loss of and separation from an attachment figure
and traumatic events, as well as insecure relationships with caregivers, are
likely to foster turning to God (Granqvist, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2010). A
meta-analysis including over 1,500 participants provided substantial sup-
port for the compensation hypothesis (Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2004).
Similarly, we are suggesting that aversive forms of self-awareness, a
hallmark of which is negative evaluation of the self (low self-esteem),
may prompt individuals to flee the discomfort of self-awareness in search
of comforts they might find in spiritual awareness. Although we empha-
size different precursors than do attachment theorists, the precursors are
related: negative evaluations (“negative working models”) of the self are
closely linked to insecure attachment to others (Mikulincer, 1998; Roberts,
Gotlib, & Kassel, 1996).
Attachment researchers contrast the compensation hypothesis with the
correspondence hypothesis. According to the latter, individual differences in
religious or spiritual beliefs correspond to individual differences in attach-
ment relationships with caregivers. Individuals secure in relationships with
caregivers develop secure relationships with God and those insecure in
relationships with caregivers develop insecure relationships with God. As
indicated above, there is overall a correlation between insecure attachment
to caregivers and religiosity. However – consistent with the correspondence
hypothesis – individuals who were securely attached to parents who were
highly religious also became highly religious themselves (Granqvist, 2002;
84 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

Granqvist & Hagekull, 1999; Granqvist et al., 2010; Kirkpatrick & Shaver,
1990; Reinert & Edwards, 2009). Similarly, we suggest a correspondence
effect whereby security in self-awareness, owing to high levels of self-
esteem, gives rise to security in spiritual awareness. The latter is likely to be
manifested as confidence in a safe spiritual base to which the individual can
return if spiritual exploration leads to feelings of danger – for example, fears
of mortality or punishment.
Following the reasoning of attachment theorists, we are suggesting that
spiritual awareness can serve as a defense against self-awareness (the com-
pensation dynamic) as well as a mirror of self-awareness (the correspon-
dence dynamic). Self-awareness is often triggered by failure and leads to
unfavorable comparisons to self ’s standards (I am not doing as well as I
should) and to negative emotion. In those cases, self-awareness can moti-
vate people to compensate for their negative feelings, and spiritual aware-
ness can serve as a defense against perceived vulnerability, inadequacy and,
ultimately, mortality. Spiritual awareness provides “relief ” either in the form
of alignment with an omnipotent God or “no self ” – a merging of self with
the cosmos, thereby taking the “bite” out of self-awareness or lessening its
presence in self ’s consciousness.
In cases of correspondence, by contrast, negative self-awareness moti-
vates people to adopt a negative model of spiritual awareness: “a view of God
as remote and inaccessible” or a fear that one might easily fall out of God’s
favor (Granqvist et al., 2010, p.54). People’s relationships with God and the
afterlife are not necessarily benign. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God
accepts and forgives, but also judges and punishes. We must account for our
sins and we might have a blissful afterlife – or we might be punished and
sent to hell. Correspondence also occurs in cases of positive self-awareness.
When people feel comfortable in a state of self-awareness, they are likely
to develop a corresponding (positive) spiritual awareness. In these cases,
spiritual awareness provides an other-worldly frontier that one feels safe to
explore, just as a positive view of the self as worthy of protection and care
provides the safety to explore the secular world (Bowlby, 1969). Spiritual
awareness can be uplifting, allowing people to align with forces greater than
the self or with humanity generally, and to move away from earthly con-
cerns and toward ultimate concerns and things that matter most.
It is also possible that spiritual awareness feeds back to influence self-
awareness. According to attachment theorists, spirituality as compensa-
tion might set in motion an “earned security” process for individuals who
are initially insecure with respect to attachment. As noted by Granqvist et
al. (2010), “it is even possible that a process of positive change in working
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 85

models (especially in the model of self) of relatively insecure individuals


might be initiated by experiencing God’s love and forgiveness” (p. 54).
Research is needed to clarify the relationship between self-awareness
and spiritual awareness. We need to assess the relationship between levels
of spiritual awareness and levels of self-awareness as enduring character-
istics of individuals and as responses to stressors. Although the evidence
indicates that self-awareness is a fundamental precondition of spiritual
awareness, and that the two forms of awareness are related in important
ways, we know very little about their co-occurrence at any point in time, in
specific situations, and over development.

Summary
Cultural differences in self-awareness lay the foundation for differences in
spiritual awareness. Among Westerners, the shift is from one’s own first
person perspective to the perspective of an all-powerful God, from an
independent sense of self to a self aligned with God, and from a concern
with self-esteem to a concern with God’s approval. Among Easterners, in
contrast, the shift is from a secular, collectivistic worldview to a worldview
emphasizing a common humanity, from an interdependent sense of self to
a nonself, and from a concern with maintaining face to a concern with com-
passion and not judging self or others.
Increased spiritual awareness requires three elements:
•• First, it requires cognitive changes in adolescence, leading to increased
self-awareness. The nature of self-awareness in different cultures depends
on the perspective, conception of self, and form of evaluation that is
prevalent in the culture.
•• Second, it requires high levels of mortality salience, which result from
threats to self and to self-awareness. Adolescents do not just fear death of
the body, but also loss of consciousness. The ways in which adolescents
negotiate mortality salience differs across cultures largely because of cul-
tural differences in self-awareness.
•• Third, spiritual awareness requires spiritual worldviews, which are prev-
alent in each culture and which become more accessible under condi-
tions of mortality salience.
Differences between European-Americans’ Christian spiritual awareness
and East Asians’ Buddhist spiritual awareness reflect culturally specific
solutions to universal existential problems engendered by the interaction of
self-awareness and mortality salience.
86 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

Notes

1. Opposite dynamics have also been found – inducing mortality salience (e.g., sublimi-
nally presenting words about death) leads to increased concerns about self-awareness,
as indicated by efforts to decrease self-awareness (Arndt et al., 1998).

References

Arndt, J., Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1998). Terror man-
agement and self-awareness: Evidence that mortality salience provokes avoidance
of the self-focus state. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 1216–1227.
Bacow, T. L., Pincus, D. B., Ehrenreich, J. T., & Brody, L. R. (2009). The metacogni-
tions questionnaire for children: Development and validation in a clinical sample
of children and adolescents with anxiety disorders. Journal of Anxiety Disorders,
23, 727–736.
Bamford, C., & Lagattuta, K. H. (2010). A new look at children’s understanding of mind
and emotion: The case of prayer. Developmental Psychology, 46, 78–92.
Bargh, J. A. (2004). Bypassing the will: Towards demystifying the nonconscious con-
trol of social behavior. In R. R. Hassin, J. S. Uleman, & J.A. Bargh (Eds.), The new
unconscious (pp. 37–60). New York: Oxford University Press.
Baumeister, R. F. (1987). How the self became a problem: A psychological review of his-
torical research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 163–176.
  (2010). The self. In R. F. Baumeister & E. J. Finkel (Eds.), Advanced social psychology:
The state of the science (pp. 139–176). New York: Oxford University Press.
Beaman, A. L., Klentz, B., Diener, E., & Svanum, S. (1979). Self-awareness and transgres-
sion in children: Two field studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37,
835–846.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment (2nd ed.). New York: Basic
Books.
Brehm, J. W., Wright, R. A., Solomon, S., Silka, K., & Greenberg, J. (1983). Perceived dif-
ficulty, energization, and the magnitude of good valence. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 19, 21–48.
Broughton, J. (1978). Development of concepts of self, mind, reality, and knowledge. In
W. Damon (Ed.), Social cognition: New directions for child development. Vol. 1 (pp.
75–100). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its
role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84,
822–848.
Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Two decades of terror manage-
ment theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. Personality & Social
Psychology Review, 14, 155–195.
Callaghan, T. C., Rochat, P., Lillard, A., Claux, M. L., Odden, H., Itakura, S., … Singh,
S. (2005). Synchrony in the onset of mental-state reasoning. Psychological Science,
16, 378–384.
Carpendale, J. I., & Chandler, M. J. (1996). On the distinction between false belief under-
standing and subscribing to an interpretive theory of mind. Child Development, 67,
1686–1706.
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 87

Chandler, M. J., Sokol, B. W., & Hallett, D. (2001). Moral responsibility and the interpre-
tative turn: Children’s changing conceptions of truth and rightness. In B. F. Malle,
L. J. Moses, & D. A. Baldwin (Eds.), Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of
social cognition (pp. 345–366). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chiu, C. Y., Gelfand, M. J., Yamagishi, T., Shteynberg, G., & Wan, C. (2010).
Intersubjective culture: The role of intersubjective perceptions in cross-cultural
research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 482–493.
Choudhury, S., Blakemore, S. J., & Charman, T. (2006). Social cognitive development
during adolescence. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 1, 165–174.
Cohen, D., Hoshino-Browne, E., & Leung, A. (2007). Culture and the structure of per-
sonal experience: Insider and outsider phenomonologies of the self and social
world. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, 39 (pp.
1–67). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Creswell, J. D., Lam, S., Stanton, A. L., Taylor, S. E., Bower, J. E., & Sherman, D. K. (2007).
Does self-affirmation, cognitive processing, or discovery of meaning explain can-
cer-related health benefits of expressive writing? Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 33, 238–250.
Damon, W., & Hart, D. (1982). The development of self understanding from infancy
through adolescence. Child Development, 53, 841–864.
Dechesne, M., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Ransom, S., Sheldon, K. M., van Knippenberg,
A., & Jannsen, J. (2003). Literal and symbolic immortality: The effect of evidence of
literal immortality on self-esteem striving in response to mortality salience. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 722–737.
Demers, I., Bernier, A., Tarabulsy, G., & Provost, M. (2010). Maternal and child char-
acteristics as antecedents of maternal mind-mindedness. Infant Mental Health
Journal, 31, 94–112.
Dosch, M., Loenneker, T., Bucher, K., Martin, E., & Klaver, P. (2010). Learning to appre-
ciate others: Neural development of cognitive perspective taking. Neuroimage, 50,
837–846.
Duval, T. S., & Silvia, P. J. (2002). Self-awareness, probability of improvement, and the
self-serving bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 49–61.
Duval, T. S., & Wicklund, R. A. (1972). A theory of objective self-awareness. New York:
Academic Press.
Ekman, P., Davidson, R. J., Ricard, M., & Wallace, B. A. (2005). Buddhist and psycholog-
ical perspectives on emotions and well being. Current Directions in Psychological
Science, 14, 59–63.
Elkind, D. (1985). Egocentrism redux. Developmental Review, 5, 218–226.
Enright, R. D., Shukla, D. G., & Lapsley, D. K. (1980). Adolescent egocentrism-sociocen-
trism and self-consciousness. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 9, 101–115.
Epley, N., Keysar, B., Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Perspective taking as ego-
centric anchoring and adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87,
327–339.
Flavell, J. H. (1999). Cognitive development: Children’s knowledge about the mind.
Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 21–45.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). Gratitude, like other positive emotions, broadens and builds.
In R. A. Emmons & M. E. McCullough (Eds.), The psychology of gratitude (pp.
145–166). New York: Oxford University Press.
88 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

Froming, W. J., Walker, G. R., & Lopyan, K. J. (1982). Public and private self-awareness:
When personal attitudes conflict with societal expectations. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 18, 476–487.
Goukens, C., Dewitte, S., & Warlop, L. (2009). Me, myself, and my choices: The influence
of private self-awareness on choice. Journal of Marketing Research, 46, 682–692.
Granqvist, P. (1998). Religiousness and perceived childhood attachment: On the ques-
tion of compensation or correspondence. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
37, 350–367.
  (2002). Attachment and religiosity in adolescence: Cross-sectional and longitudinal
evaluations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 260–270.
Granqvist, P., & Hagekull, B. (1999). Religiousness and perceived childhood attachment:
Profiling socialized correspondence and emotional compensation. Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion, 38, 254–273.
Granqvist, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2004). Religious conversion and perceived childhood
attachment: A meta-analysis. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion,
14, 223–250.
Granqvist, P., Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2010). Religion as attachment: Normative
processes and individual differences. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14,
49–59.
Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of
the need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.),
Public self and private self (pp. 189–212). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Veeder, M., Kirkland, S., &
Lyon, D. (1990). Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortal-
ity salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 308–318.
Greenberg, J., Sullivan, D., Kosloff, S., & Solomon, S. (2006). Souls do not live by cogni-
tive inclinations alone, but by the desire to exist beyond death as well. Behavioral
and Brain Sciences, 29, 474–475.
Greenfield, P. M., Keller, H., Fuligni, A., & Maynard, A. (2003). Cultural pathways
through universal development. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 461–490.
Guroglu B., van den Bos, W., & Crone, E. A. (2009). Fairness considerations: Increasing
understanding of intentionality in adolescence. Journal of Experimental Child
Psychology, 104, 398–409.
Haidt, J. (2006). The happiness hypothesis: Finding modern truth in ancient wisdom. New
York: Basic Books.
Happé, F. G. E. (1994). An advanced test of theory of mind: Understanding of story char-
acters’ thoughts and feelings by able autistic, mentally handicapped, and normal
children and adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24, 129–154.
Harris, P. L., Johnson, C. N., Hutton, D., Andrews, G., & Cooke, T. (1989). Young chil-
dren’s theory of mind and emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 3, 379–400.
Hart, J., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2007). A terror management perspective on spirituality and
the problem of the body. In A. Tomer, G. T. Eliason, & P. T. P. Wong (Eds.), Existential
and spiritual issues in death attitudes (pp. 91–114). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Heatherton, T. F. (2011). Neuroscience of self and self-regulation. Annual Review of
Psychology, 62, 363–390.
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 89

Heine, S. J. (2001). Self as a product of culture: An examination of East Asian and North
American selves. Journal of Personality, 69, 881–906.
Heine, S. J., & Hamamura, T. (2007). In search of East Asian self-enhancement.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 4–27.
Heine, S. J., Harihara, M., & Niiya, Y. (2002). Terror management in Japan. Asian Journal
of Social Psychology, 5, 187–196.
Heine, S. J., Takemoto, T., Moskalenko, S., Lasaleta, J., & Henrich, J. (2008). Mirrors
in the head: Cultural variation in objective self-awareness. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 34, 879–887.
Hesse, H. (2008). Siddhartha (EBook). Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/
files/2500/2500-h/2500-h.htm
Heyman, G. D., Fu, G., & Lee, K. (2007). Evaluating claims people make about them-
selves: The development of skepticism. Child Development, 78, 367–375.
Ho, D., & Ho, R. (2007). Measuring spirituality and spiritual emptiness: Toward ecume-
nicity and transcultural applicability. Review of General Psychology, 11, 62–74.
Hughes, C., & Leekam, S. (2004). What are the links between theory of mind and social
relations? Review, reflections and new directions for studies of typical and atypical
development. Social Development, 13, 598–619.
Imada, T., & Kitayama, S. (2010). Social eyes and choice justification: Culture and disso-
nance revisited. Social Cognition, 28, 589–608.
Inhelder, B., & Piaget, J. (1958). The growth of logical thinking from childhood to adoles-
cence. New York: Basic Books.
Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic
religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 553–567.
Kashima, E. S., Halloran, M., Yuki, M., & Kashima, Y. (2004). The effects of personal and
collective mortality salience on individualism: Comparing Australians and Japanese
with higher and lower self-esteem. Journal of Experiment Social Psychology, 40,
384–392.
Kim, H. S. (2009). Express your social self: Cultural differences in choice of brand-
name versus generic products. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35,
1555–1566.
Kim, Y. H., & Cohen, D. (2010). The jury and abjury of my peers: The self in face and
dignity cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 904–916.
Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1990). Attachment theory and religion: Childhood
attachments, religious beliefs, and conversion. Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion, 29, 315–334.
Kitayama, S., & Imada, T. (2010). Implicit independence and interdependence. In B.
Mesquita, L. Feldman Barret, & E. Smith (Eds.), The mind in context (pp. 174–200).
New York: Guildford.
Kitayama, S., Markus, H. R., Matsumoto, H., & Norasakkunkit, V. (1997). Individual and
collective processes in the construction of the self: Self-enhancement in the United
States and self-criticism in Japan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72,
1245–1267.
Kitayama, S., Snibbe, A. C., Markus, H. R., & Suzuki, T. (2004). Is there any “free” choice?
Self and dissonance in two cultures. Psychological Science, 15, 527–533.
90 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

Koole, S. L., & Van den Berg, A. E. (2004). Paradise lost and reclaimed: An existen-
tial motives analysis of human-nature relations. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, &
T. Pyszczinsky (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 86–103).
New York: Guildford.
Lalwani, A. K., & Shavitt, S. (2009). The “me” I claim to be: Cultural self-construal elicits
self-presentational goal pursuit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97,
88–102.
Lalwani, A. K., Shrum, L. J., & Chiu, C. Y. (2009). Motivated response style: The role
of cultural values, regulatory focus, and self-consciousness in socially desirable
responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 870–882.
Leary, M. R., Adams, C. E., & Tate, E. B. (2006). Hypo-egoic self-regulation: Exercising
self-control by diminishing the influence of the self. Journal of Personality, 74,
1803–1831.
Lillard, A. S. (1998). Ethnopsychologies: Cultural variations in theories of mind.
Psychological Bulletin, 123, 3–32.
Liu, D., Wellman, H. M., Tardif, T., & Sabbagh, M. A. (2008). Theory of mind devel-
opment in Chinese children: A meta-analysis of false belief understanding across
cultures and languages. Developmental Psychology, 44, 523–531.
Mandel, N., & Smeesters, D. (2008). The sweet escape: The effects of mortality salience
on consumption quantities for low and high self-esteem consumers. Journal of
Consumer Research, 35, 309–323.
Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition,
emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.
Mazor, A., & Enright, R. D. (1988). The development of the individuation process from
a social-cognitive perspective. Journal of Adolescence, 11, 29–47.
McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., & Tsang, J. (2002). The grateful disposition: A con-
ceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82,
112–127.
McCullough, M. E., & Willoughby, B. L. B. (2009). Religion, self control, and self-
­regulation: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin,
135, 69–93.
Meins, E., Fernyhough, C., Wainwright, R., Clark-Carter, D., Gupta, M. D., Fradley,
E., … Tuckey, M. (2003). Pathways to understanding mind: Construct validity
and predictive validity of maternal mind-mindedness. Child Development, 74,
1194–1211.
Mikulincer, M. (1998). Attachment working models and the sense of trust: An explo-
ration of interaction goals and affect regulation. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 74, 1209–1224.
Miller, J. G. (1994). Cultural diversity in the morality of caring: Individually oriented
versus duty-based interpersonal codes. Cross-Cultural Research, 28, 3–39.
Miller, P. J., Sandel, T. L., Liang, C. H., & Fung, H. (2001). Narrating transgressions in
Longwood: The discourses, meanings, and paradoxes of an American socializing
practice. Ethos, 29, 159–186.
Miller, P. J., Wang, S., Sandel, T., & Cho, G. E. (2002). Self-esteem as folk theory: A
comparison of European American and Taiwanese mothers’ beliefs. In C. S. Tamis-
LeMonda & R. Harwood (Eds.), Special issue of parenting: Science & practice:
Parental ethnotheories: Cultural practices and normative development, 2, 209–239.
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 91

Na, J., & Kitayama, S. (2010). Motivational effects of choice in East and West: The moder-
ating role of social eyes priming. Unpublished manuscript, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor.
Newman, L. S., Duff, K. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). A new look at defensive projec-
tion: Thought suppression, accessibility, and biased person perception. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 980–1001.
Oosterwegel, A., & Oppenheimer, L. (2002). Jumping to awareness of conflict between
self representations and its relation to psychological well-being. International
Journal of Behavioral Development, 26, 548–555.
Patall, E. A., Cooper, H., & Robinson, J. C. (2008). The effects of choice on intrinsic moti-
vation and related outcomes: A meta-analysis of research findings. Psychological
Bulletin, 134, 270–300.
Perner, J., & Wimmer, H. (1985). “John thinks that Mary thinks that…” Attribution
of second-order beliefs by 5–10 year old children. Journal of Experimental Child
Psychology, 39, 437–471.
Pham, M. T., Goukens, C., Lehmann, D. R., & Stuart, J. A. (2010). Shaping customer
satisfaction through self-awareness cues. Journal of Marketing Research, 47,
920–932.
Pillow, B. H., & Henrichon, A. J. (1996). There’s more to the picture than meets the eye:
Young children’s difficulty understanding biased interpretation. Child Development,
67, 803–819.
Proulx, T., & Chandler, M. J. (2009). Jekyll and Hyde and me: Age-graded differences in
conceptions of self-unity. Human Development, 52, 261–286.
Pyszczynski, T., Abdollahi, A., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., & Weise, D. (2006).
Mortality salience, martyrdom, and military might: The great Satan versus the axis
of evil. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 525–537.
Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). A dual-process model of defense
against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: An extension of terror
management theory. Psychological Review, 106, 835–845.
Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., & Schimel, J. (2004). Why do peo-
ple need self-esteem? A theoretical and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin,
130, 435–468.
Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Hamilton, J. (1990). A terror management
analysis of self-awareness and anxiety: The hierarchy of terror. Anxiety Research,
2, 177–195.
Rachlin, H. (2000). The science of self-control. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Reinert, D., & Edwards, C. (2009). Attachment theory, childhood mistreatment, and
religiosity. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 1, 25–34.
Roberts, J. E., Kassel, J. D., & Gotlib, I. H. (1996). Adult attachment security and symp-
toms of depression: The mediating role of dysfunctional attitudes and low self-
esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 310–320.
Rothbaum, F., Pott, M., Azuma, H., Myake, K., & Weisz, J. (2000). The development of
close relationships in Japan and the United States: Paths of symbiotic harmony and
generative tension. Child Development, 71, 1121–1142.
Rothbaum, F., & Trommsdorff, G. (2007). Do roots and wings complement or oppose
one another? The socialization of relatedness and autonomy in cultural context. In
92 Rothbaum, Wang, and Cohen

J. E. Grusec & P. D. Hastings (Eds.), Handbook of socialization: Theory and research


(pp. 461–489). New York: Guilford.
Rothbaum, F., Weisz, J., & Snyder, S. S. (1982). Changing the world and changing the
self: A two-process model of perceived control. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 42, 5–37.
Sabbagh, M. A., Xu, F., Carlson, S. M., Moses, L. J., & Lee, K. (2006). The development
of executive functioning and theory of mind: A comparison of Chinese and U.S.
preschoolers. Psychological Science, 17, 74–81.
Sauter, F. M., Heyne, D., Blote, A. W., van Widenfelt, B. M., & Westenberg, P. M. (2010).
Assessing therapy-relevant cognitive capacities in young people: Development and
psychometric properties of the self-reflection and insight scale for youth. Behavioral
and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 38, 303–317.
Savani, K., Markus, H. R., Naidu, N. V. R., Kumar, S., & Berlia, N. (2010). What counts
as a choice? U.S. Americans are more likely than Indians to construe actions as
choices. Psychological Science, 21, 391–398.
Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (1980). Private and public self-attention, resistance to
change, and dissonance reduction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39,
514–521.
Schimel, J., Landau, M., & Hayes, J. (2008). Self-esteem: A human solution to the prob-
lem of death. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 1218–1234.
Sebastian C., Burnett S., & Blakemore, S. J. (2008). Development of the self-concept dur-
ing adolescence. Trends in Cognitive Science, 12, 441–446.
Sedikides, C., & Gregg, A. P. (2008). Self-enhancement: Food for thought. Perspectives
on Psychological Science, 3, 102–116.
Selman, R. L. (1980). The growth of interpersonal understanding: Development and clini-
cal analyses. New York: Academic Press.
Shavitt, S., Swann, S., Lowrey, T. M., & Wanke, M. (1992). The interaction of endorser
attractiveness and involvement in persuasion depends on the goal that guides mes-
sage processing. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 3, 137–162.
Silvia, P. J. (2001). Nothing or the opposite: Intersecting terror management and objec-
tive self-awareness. European Journal of Personality, 15, 73–82.
Silvia, P. J., & Duval, T. S. (2001). Objective self-awareness theory: Recent progress and
enduring problems. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 230–241.
Silvia, P. J., & Phillips, A. G. (2011). Evaluating self-reflection and insight as self-
­conscious traits. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 234–237.
Smith, H. (1991). The world’s religions. New York: HarperCollins.
Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (1991). A terror management theory of
social behavior: The psychological foundation of self-esteem and cultural world-
views. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology. Vol. 24 (pp.
93–159). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Tam, K. P., Chiu, C. Y., & Lau, I. Y. M. (2007). Terror management among Chinese:
Worldview defense and intergroup bias in resource allocation. Asian Journal of
Social Psychology, 10, 93–102.
Taylor, S. E., Sherman, D. K., Kim, H. S., Jarcho, J., Takagi, K., & Dunagan, M. S. (2004).
Culture and social support: Who seeks it and why? Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 87, 354–362.
Cultural Differences in Self-Awareness 93

Tsai, J. L., Miao, F. F., & Seppala, E. (2007). Good feelings in Christianity and Buddhism:
Religious differences in ideal affect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33,
409–421.
Twenge, J. M., Catanese, K. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2003). Social exclusion and the
deconstructed state: Time perception, meaninglessness, lethargy, lack of emotion,
and self awareness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 409–423.
United States Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
(2004). International Religious Freedom Report. Retrieved from http://www.state.
gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/c12779.htm.
Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg,
J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 84–94.
Wachholtz, A. B., & Pearce, M. J. (2009). Does spirituality as a coping mechanism help
or hinder coping with chronic pain? Current Pain and Headache Reports, 13,
127–132.
Wakimoto, R. (2006). Mortality salience effects on modesty and relative self-effacement.
Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 9, 176–183.
Walach, H., Buchheld, N., Buttenmüller, V., Kleinknecht, N., & Schmidt, S. (2006).
Measuring mindfulness – the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI). Personality
and Individual Differences, 40, 1543–1555.
Wang Y. Z., Wiley, A. R., & Chiu, C. Y. (2008). Independence-supportive praise versus
independence-promoting praise. International Journal of Behavioral Development,
32, 13–20.
Wenzlaff, R. M., & Wegner, D. M. (2000). Thought suppression. Annual Review of
Psychology, 51, 59–91.
Wicklund, R. A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (1982). Symbolic self-completion. Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Wiekens, C. J., & Stapel, D. A. (2010). Self-awareness and saliency of social versus indi-
vidualistic behavioral standards. Social Psychology, 41, 10–19.
Wu, S., & Keysar, B. (2007). Cultural effects on perspective taking. Psychological Science,
18, 600–606.
Wu, X. (2009). The dynamics of Chinese face mechanisms and classroom behaviour: A
case study. Evaluation & Research in Education, 22, 87–105.
Yen, C. L., & Cheng, C. P. (2010). Terror management among Taiwanese: Worldview
defense or resigning to fate? Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 13, 185–194.
Part Two
Universal and Culture-specific
Functions of Adolescent Values and
Religion
4 Values and Religion in Adolescent Development
Cross-National and Comparative Evidence

Shalom H. Schwartz

Abstract
This chapter briefly reviews the nature of ten basic values recognized in cul-
tures around the world that influence attitudes and behavior in all societ-
ies. Using data on Protestant, Roman Catholic, Muslim, Eastern Orthodox,
Jewish, and no religion samples of adolescents and adults from representa-
tive national samples from 30 countries, it addresses questions important
for understanding the development of adolescents’ values and the relations
of their values to religion. Research reveals that, by mid-adolescence, the
dynamic structure of conflicts and compatibilities that gives coherence to
adult value systems has already developed. Moreover, this holds in all six
religion groups. Thus, the structure of relations among the ten basic values is
largely a function of universal developmental processes rather than of social-
ization into particular religions. Adolescents understand and organize the
ten basic values in ways similar to adults, but their value priorities differ from
those of adults. Adolescents accord substantially less importance than adults
do to all of the other-oriented values. They are less concerned than adults
with promoting the welfare of members of their in-group (benevolence)
and of the wider society (universalism) and with avoiding change or uncer-
tainty (security, conformity, and tradition). On the other hand, adolescents
give higher priority than adults to self-enhancing values (achievement and
power) and to values that encourage the pursuit of excitement (stimulation)
and pleasure (hedonism). Values that emphasize autonomy (self-direction)
peak in late-adolescence and remain very important until the mid-30s before
declining thereafter. The chapter discusses aspects of development and
socialization that can account for these near universal trends and for small
changes in value priorities that occur between mid- and late-adolescence.
Do more and less religious adolescents differ in their value priorities? The
chapter reports that, strikingly, very similar patterns emerge regardless of
religion. Religiosity relates most positively to tradition values, positively to

97
98 Schwartz

conformity values, negatively to self-direction, stimulation, and power val-


ues, and most negatively to hedonism and stimulation values. These find-
ings suggest that differences in religiosity among adolescents are largely a
product of adolescents’ choices about how religious they should be based on
their individual value priorities. Socialization and teaching within particular
religions plays a smaller role. We consider values and religiosity to be impor-
tant because we assume that they influence significant attitudes and behavior.
The chapter examines how adolescents’ basic values and/or their religiosity
influence the centrality of family in their lives, the importance of helping
needy people, and the importance of always obeying the law. Analyses reveal
that adolescents’ individual value priorities have a much stronger influence
on these attitudes than their degree of religiosity does. Finally, the chapter
examines processes of value acquisition that affect parent–adolescent value
similarity, using data from Israeli adolescents. It notes that what may appear
to be parental value transmission actually involves active value acquisition
by adolescents. Exposure to parents’ social circles and parental warmth and
responsiveness increase value similarity by contributing to accurate per-
ception of parents’ socialization values and/or acceptance of these values,
whereas autocratic and indifferent parenting and love withdrawal undermine
similarity in Western cultures.
Adolescence is a critical period in the development of our basic values. Our
system of value priorities crystallizes during this period. By basic values, I
refer to our beliefs about how important or desirable such abstract goals as
wisdom, security, equality, wealth, freedom, obedience, and pleasure are to
us as guiding principles in life (Schwartz, 1992; cf. Rokeach, 1973). Values
are important because they motivate our behavior (what we do), justify our
past behavior (why we did it), direct our attention (what we notice), and
serve as standards for evaluating people and events (who and what we like
or dislike) (Schwartz, 2006). As standards, basic values underlie our atti-
tudes. Many believe that religion plays an important role in the develop-
ment of values (e.g., Baker, 2005, Weber, 1905/1958). This chapter focuses
on relations between basic values and religion in adolescence.
The chapter briefly reviews the nature of basic values and their near uni-
versal structure. Using data from representative national samples from 30
countries, it addresses five questions concerned with adolescents’ values
and religion that have concerned researchers:1
(1) A near universal structure of relations among different values that
reflects the motivations they express characterizes adults around
the world. Has this motivational structure of relations among values
emerged yet by mid- or by late-adolescence?
(2) Do adolescents who are members of the different major Western
religious groups (Roman Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox,
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 99

Muslims, Jews, and no religion) differ in the motivational structure of


their values?
(3) What patterns of development can we discern in value priorities as
youth move from mid- to late-adolescence and then to adulthood?
(4) Do more and less religious adolescents have different value priorities,
and does the association between religiosity and values depend upon
the religion to which they adhere?
(5) How, if at all, do adolescents’ basic values and/or their religiosity influ-
ence three significant attitudes: the centrality of family in their lives,
the importance of helping needy people, and the importance of always
obeying the law?
Finally, the chapter discusses processes of value acquisition that affect par-
ent–adolescent value similarity and parenting variables that influence these
processes.

The Nature of Basic Values and their Structure


Basic values are beliefs about what is important and desirable. Whenever a
person expresses, pursues, or defends one of his or her values, positive or nega-
tive feelings are aroused. The Schwartz (1992) value theory identifies ten basic
values that derive from universal requirements of human existence. Listed next
are the ten values, each defined by the distinct motivational goals it expresses.
Power: social status and prestige, control, or dominance over people and
resources
Achievement: personal success through demonstrating competence
according to social standards
Hedonism: pleasure and sensuous gratification for oneself
Stimulation: excitement, novelty, and challenge in life
Self-direction: independent thought and action  – choosing, creating,
exploring
Universalism: understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for
the welfare of all people and for nature
Benevolence: preservation and enhancement of the welfare of people
with whom one is in frequent personal contact
Tradition: respect, commitment, and acceptance of the customs and
ideas that traditional culture or religion provide the self
Conformity: restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses likely to upset
or harm others and violate social expectations or norms
Security: safety, harmony, and stability of society, of relationships, and
of self
100 Schwartz

The theory further specifies a structure of dynamic relations among the


ten values. Figure 4.1 depicts this structure as a circular motivational con-
tinuum reflecting the conflict and compatibility among values. The closer
any two values around the circle, the more compatible their motivations.
The same action or attitude usually expresses or promotes both values. The
more distant any two values around the circle, the more conflicting their
motivations. Any action or attitude that expresses or promotes one value is
likely to oppose or undermine attaining the other value. The circular moti-
vational continuum describes relations among all values as an integrated
structure. It implies that any behavior or attitude that is congruent with
one basic value (e.g., controlling others’ decisions – power) should also be
congruent with its adjacent values (security and achievement). Moreover,
the behavior or attitude should conflict with the opposing values across
from it in the circle (universalism, benevolence, and self-direction). Thus,
the whole integrated structure of values relates systematically to other
variables.
As Figure 4.1 shows, the ten values are organized along two bipo-
lar dimensions: (1) self-enhancement values (power, achievement) that
encourage and legitimize the pursuit of self-interest are opposed to self-
transcendence values (universalism, benevolence) that emphasize concern
for the welfare of others, and (2) openness values (self-direction, stimu-
lation) that favor change, encourage the pursuit of new ideas and experi-
ences, are opposed to conservation values (security, tradition, conformity)
that emphasize maintaining the status quo and avoiding threat. Hedonism
values share elements of both openness and self-enhancement values, so
hedonism is located between the two sets of values.
The circular structure of values also reflects another dynamic organiz-
ing principle (Schwartz, 2006). The values in the bottom half of the circle
(Figure 4.1) are based in the need to avoid, control, and protect oneself
against anxiety and threat. The values on the bottom right emphasize
avoiding conflict, uncertainty, and change by submitting to others’ expec-
tations and passively accepting the status quo. The values on the bottom
left emphasize overcoming possible sources of anxiety by gaining domi-
nance over people and resources or by gaining others’ admiration for one’s
achievements. In contrast, values in the top half of the circle are relatively
anxiety free; they express motivations for growth and self-expansion. The
values on the top right emphasize promoting the welfare of others. Those on
the top left emphasize autonomous self-expression. Research with adults in
over 70 countries supports the motivationally distinct content of these ten
values. It also confirms the near universal structure of relations of conflict
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 101

Self-
Openness Direction Self-
to Change Universalism Transcendence
Creativity Social Justice
Freedom Equality
Stimulation
Exciting Life Benevolence
Helpfulness
Hedonism
Pleasure Tradition
Devoutness
Humility
Achievement
Success Conformity
Ambition Obedience
Self- Power
Enhancement Authority Security Conservation
Wealth Social
Order

Circle Organized by Motivational Congruence and Opposition


Figure 4.1.  Ten motivationally distinct values and their circular motivational
structure.

and compatibility among the ten values (Schwartz, 1992, 2006; Schwartz &
Boehnke, 2004).

Data and Measurement


The European Social Survey gathered data from representative national
samples in 30 countries in its first three rounds (2002–2003, 2004–2005,
2006–2007).2 Respondents from Eastern and Western Europe plus Turkey
and Israel completed face-to-face interviews. The samples included 4,962
mid-adolescents (age 15–17), 6,940 late adolescents (18–21), and 90,563
adults (22+). Respondents were asked: “Do you belong to a particular
religion or denomination?” This chapter examines values and religion
among six groups: Roman Catholics (38,498), Protestants (16,958), Eastern
Orthodox (8,128), Muslims (3,467), Jews (1,570), and those who reported
that they belong to no religion (42,409).
Respondents completed a short version of the Portrait Values
Questionnaire (PVQ; Schwartz, 2003; Schwartz et al., 2001) specially
designed for the European Social Survey. This version included verbal por-
traits of 21 different people, gender-matched with the respondent. Each
portrait described a person’s goals, aspirations, or wishes that point implic-
itly to the importance of a value. For example, “Thinking up new ideas and
being creative is important to her. She likes to do things in her own original
102 Schwartz

way” describes a person for whom self-direction values are important. “It is
important to him to be rich. He wants to have a lot of money and expensive
things” describes a person who cherishes power values. We inferred respon-
dents’ own values from their self-reported similarity to people described
implicitly in terms of particular values.
For each portrait, respondents answered: “How much like you is this
person?” Six labeled responses ranged from “not like me at all (1)” to “very
much like me (6).” The score for the importance of each value is the mean
response to the items that measure it. Two portraits operationalized each
value, with three for universalism because of its very broad content. To
eliminate individual differences in use of the response scale, each person’s
responses were centered on his or her own mean.

The Motivational Structure of Values among Adolescents


I first examine whether the motivational structure of relations among the
ten values that is typically found among adults has already emerged by
mid- or by late-adolescence. To answer this question, I used multi-dimen-
sional scaling. This scaling technique starts with the matrix of intercor-
relations among the 21 value items. It represents each item as a point in
a two-dimensional space. The distances between the points reflect the
correlations between the items. Items that operationalize the same value
(e.g., stimulation) should correlate highly positively and they should have
low or negative correlations with items that operationalize opposing val-
ues (e.g., security and conformity). Therefore, the items that operational-
ize each basic value should be close to each other in the space and they
should be distant from the group of items that operationalize the oppos-
ing values. If this is the case, it will be possible to partition the space into
ten distinct regions, each containing the items that represent one of the
ten values.
Figure 4.2 presents the empirical map of relations among the 21 value
items from the ESS in the full sample of 11,902 adolescents; it shows that
eight of the ten values can be discriminated clearly by partitioning the space.
The items that measure hedonism and stimulation are intermixed in a way
that makes it impossible to split them into separate regions. Comparing
Figure 4.2 to Figure 4.1, we see that hedonism and stimulation are adjacent
in the circle. That means that their motivations are quite similar. Perhaps
the two values have not yet been discriminated by adolescents.
Because values form a motivational continuum, meanings of items
near the boundaries of adjacent values inevitably overlap somewhat.
Consequently, value items from adjacent values also intermix sometimes,
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 103

Universalism
v3
Self-Direction v8
v1 v19
v11 v18
Benevolence
Hedonism/
Stimulation
v12
v6
v21 v9

v10 Tradition
v15
v20
v13 v14
v4 v16
Achievement Power v17 v5
v2 Security v7 Conformity

Figure 4.2.  Value structure based on 11,902 adolescents (multidimensional scaling).

rather than emerging in clearly distinct regions. Item 19, protecting the
environment, emerges in the universalism region for adults but in the adja-
cent benevolence region for adolescents. This suggests a slight difference in
the meaning of this value. Its location with benevolence, a value concerned
with the welfare of close others, suggests that adolescents see protecting
the environment as a more personal concern than adults do. This genera-
tional difference may reflect the much greater emphasis on preserving the
environment in the socialization and education of children as compared to
their parents.
From Figure 4.2 we can conclude that, when we take mid- and late ado-
lescents together, the significant distinctions among the basic values found
among adults are indeed already present. Moreover, separate multi-dimen-
sional scaling analyses of the value items in the mid- and late adolescent
samples yield virtually identical projections. In sum, on average, adoles-
cents apparently develop an understanding of the ten basic values by age
15, and they already make the distinctions among the values that they will
continue to make in adulthood.
Do adolescents recognize the same conflicts and compatibilities among
the basic values that adults do? That is, is the circular motivational struc-
ture, with the same opposed and compatible values, already present among
104 Schwartz

adolescents? Comparing Figure 4.2 to Figure 4.1, we see that adolescents,


like adults, organize their values into the opposing types of self-transcen-
dence versus self-enhancement values and of openness to change versus
conservation values. Moreover, the order of the basic values around the cir-
cle is the same as that typically found among adults. This also holds true
in separate analyses of the data for the mid- and late adolescents. Thus,
by mid-adolescence, the dynamic structure of conflicts and compatibilities
that comprise adult value systems has already developed.
Melech (2001) found that a sample of Israeli 12-year-olds exhibited a less
refined structure that distinguished only the broad oppositions between
self-transcendence and self-enhancement and between openness to change
and conservation values. This suggests that the more fined-tuned structure
of basic values may develop gradually between ages 12 and 15. However,
research using instruments more suited to children suggests that it may
begin to develop earlier. Using a picture-based value survey, Döring, et al.
(2010) found that 9–10-year-old German children already discriminated
among the ten values and ordered them in the same motivational circle as
adults. Moreover, a study of German twins aged 7–11 that used a simplified
version of the PVQ to measure eight values (Knafo & Spinath, 2011) found
that these eight values were discriminated.
These findings fit the developmental view that children in late childhood
and early adolescence begin to organize the concrete, observable elements
of their world into trait categories when they describe themselves and other
persons (Harter, 1999). They act like “intuitive moralists” (Thompson,
Meyer, & McGinley, 2006) who hold a basic conception of desirable goals
that are stable over time (Harter, 1999). Such emerging basic conceptions fit
my definition of values. Apparently, early adolescents not only form these
conceptions but they organize them into reasonably coherent systems.
What about the effect of religion on the motivational structure of adoles-
cents’ values? Do adolescents from different religious groups organize their
value systems into ten values that reflect the same relations of compatibility
and conflict? Separate analyses within each religious group suggest that they
do. In the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Muslim adolescent samples, the
results were the same as in Figure 4.2, with hedonism and stimulation inter-
mixed. In the Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, and no religion samples, all ten
basic values were discriminated and ordered around the circle as among
adults (i.e., as in Figure 4.1).
Taken together, this set of analyses implies that the structure of relations
among the ten basic values is largely a function of universal developmen-
tal processes. Socialization into particular religions with their unique value
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 105

priorities does not appear to affect the way adolescents distinguish among
values and organize them into a coherent system. This does not mean that
social experience has no influence on the emergence of the value struc-
ture. The structure reflects the conflicts people experience when they must
choose between mutually opposed goals (Schwartz, 2006). Such conflicts
arise in the everyday experience of children, adolescents, and adults in all
human groups. They help to shape the structure of values.
The observed similarity of the value structure across groups makes it
legitimate to compare the values of these groups. It allows us to assume that
the meanings of the ten values are reasonably similar for adolescents and
adults and for adolescents from different religious groups. This is critical
when we look at similarities and differences in value priorities.

Development and Change in Value Priorities


We next examine patterns of development in value priorities as youth move
from mid- to late-adolescence and then to adulthood. Consider first the
other-oriented values, security, conformity, tradition, benevolence, and
universalism. Figure 4.3 reveals that adolescents attribute substantially
less importance than adults do to every one of these other-oriented values.
Adolescents are much less concerned than adults are about promoting the
welfare both of members of their in-group (benevolence) and of the wider
society (universalism). Moreover, it is much less important to them to pre-
serve the status quo and to avoid change or uncertainty (security, confor-
mity, and tradition).
Several factors may explain these differences between adolescents and
adults (Arnett, 2000; Elliott & Feldman, 1990; Lerner & Steinberg, 2009).
These include: (1) adolescents have less responsibility for maintaining the
major groups of which they are part (e.g., families) and caring for the wel-
fare of others, (2) they are less committed to the established ways of doing
things, (3) they are more invested in establishing their independent iden-
tities and in trying out new roles, and (4) they have greater freedom from
social constraints and physical limitations.
Comparing mid-adolescents to late adolescents, they do not differ in the
importance they attribute to security and conformity values. However, tra-
dition, benevolence, and universalism values are slightly stronger among
late adolescents. The change in benevolence may reflect increasing com-
mitments among late adolescents to intimate relationships of their own
choosing (e.g., Collins, Welsh, & Furman, 2009). The change in universal-
ism values may derive from increasing awareness of human interdepen-
dence through greater exposure to different groups and to events in the
106 Schwartz

5 15–17 18–21 22+

4.5

3.5

2.5
SEC CON TRA BEN UNI
Figure 4.3.  Adolescents’ and adults’ priorities for other-oriented values compared.
Note: SEC = security, CON = conformity, TRA = tradition, BEN = benevolence, UNI =
universalism

wider society (Schwartz & Bardi, 2001). The change in tradition occurred
only among Protestant adolescents, for unclear reasons. The other-oriented
values became increasingly important with age from adolescence across
each succeeding adult cohort until at least age 75 (except for universalism
that levels off after age 50). For security and conformity values, however,
this trend begins only after adolescence.
Now consider the self-oriented values: self-direction, stimulation, hedo-
nism, achievement, and power. Figure 4.4 reveals that adolescents attri-
bute substantially more importance than adults do to all of them except
self-direction. Not surprisingly, stimulation and hedonism show the big-
gest differences. These values express adolescents’ greater pursuit of excite-
ment and pleasure as they explore and experiment, still relatively free of
the social role constraints and physical limitations of adulthood (Lerner
& Steinberg, 2009). Adolescents also give higher priority than adults do to
the self-enhancing values of achievement and power. This may reflect their
pursuit of social acceptance and success as part of their emerging identi-
ties (Jarvinen & Nichols, 1996). After adolescence, all four of these values
show decreased importance in each adult age cohort until at least age 75.
This decrease is already underway between mid- and late-adolescence for
stimulation, hedonism, and achievement values.
Self-direction values follow a somewhat different trajectory. These values
express the importance of autonomy of thought and action, of independence
in making decisions. They are at the peak of importance in late-­adolescence
and remain very important until the mid-30s. During this period, individu-
als establish and consolidate their distinct identities in the world of work
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 107

4.6 15–17 18–21 22+

4.2

3.8

3.4

3
SDIR STIM HED ACH POW
Figure 4.4.  Adolescents’ and adults’ priorities for self-oriented values compared.
Note: SDIR = self-direction, STIM = stimulation, HED = hedonism, ACH = ­achievement,
POW = power

and intimate relations, separate from their family of origin (Côté, 2009).
Thereafter, like the other self-oriented values, self-direction is less impor-
tant with each succeeding adult age cohort.

Value Priorities and Religiosity


We have seen that adolescents have different value priorities than adults.
However, do more and less religious adolescents differ in their value pri-
orities? Consider two ways in which values and religiosity may become
associated (Schwartz & Huismans, 1995). First, religious socialization, both
formal (e.g., schooling, preaching) and informal (e.g., youth groups, fam-
ily practices), might inculcate values. The values of more and less religious
adolescents may differ because they are exposed to different degrees of reli-
gious socialization. Moreover, religions may emphasize somewhat different
values in socialization (e.g., benevolence more or universalism more; self-
direction more or conformity more). If so, the value differences between
more and less religious adolescents produced by religious socialization
should vary across religions.
A second way in which values and religiosity may become associated
focuses on adolescents’ active choices rather than on how they are social-
ized. Adolescents may choose how religious to be, depending on the values
that are important to them. For example, adolescents who value hedonism
may choose to be less religious because religions generally oppose hedo-
nistic pleasure seeking. Adolescents who value conformity may choose
108 Schwartz

to be more religious because they are comfortable conforming to socially


approved expectations that religions provide. Of course, most adolescents
are born into and exposed to a particular religion. In this view, however,
how important religion becomes in their lives depends on the extent to
which the religion facilitates or interferes with the pursuit of their impor-
tant values.
According to the religious socialization process, the experiences tied to
belonging to a religious group influence the value priorities of adolescents:
causality flows from religion to personal value priorities. According to the
process of choosing how religious to be based on personal values, the ado-
lescents’ own value priorities influence their degree of religiosity: causality
flows from personal value priorities to religiosity. Of course, both processes
may operate.
To examine relations of value priorities to religiosity, I adopted an index
of religiosity demonstrated to have a similar meaning across the ESS sam-
ples (Billiet & Meuleman, 2007). The index included three items3: (1) “How
religious are you (11 pt. scale)?” (2) “How often do you attend religious
services apart from special occasions (7 pt. scale)?” and (3) “How often do
you pray apart from at services (7 pt. scale)?” Table 4.1 displays the cor-
relations between values and religiosity in each religious group, controlling
gender and age.
Note first that, for every religious group, religiosity relates most posi-
tively to tradition values and most negatively to hedonism or stimulation
values. In every religious group, religiosity also relates positively to con-
formity values and negatively to self-direction, stimulation, and power
values. Thus, the more religious an adolescent, the less importance he or she
attributes to openness values, regardless of the religion to which he or she
belongs. Moreover, the more religious an adolescent, the more importance
he or she attributes to conservation values, regardless of religion (excepting
security among Jews).
The similarity of this pattern of correlations between values and reli-
giosity across different religions is more compatible with the process of
value-based choice of level of religiosity than with the process of religious
socialization. Adolescents for whom it is especially important to pursue
their own ideas and lifestyles (openness values) are likely to find religion
constraining and therefore less attractive. Adolescents who strongly value
meeting social expectations and preserving the status quo (conservation
values) are more comfortable adopting the relatively conservative ideas and
lifestyles promulgated by religions. They are therefore more attracted to
religion and become more religious.
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 109

Table 4.1.  Correlations of Religiosity with Values among Adolescents in Five


Religious Groups, Controlling Gender and Age

Average Five Roman Protes-tants Eastern Jews Muslims


Religious Catholics (1,033) Orthodox (412) (572)
Groups (3,339) (584)
Security .03 .09** .06 .04 −.07 .03
Conformity .11 .16** .15** .12** .03 .08
Tradition .31 .21** .28** .25** .57** .19**
Benevolence .05 −.06** .07* .16** .10* .00
Universalism .03 .01 −.16** .14** −.15** .01
Self-direction −.11 −.08** −.04 −.22** −.14* −.06
Stimulation −.10 −.07** −.19** −.03 −.14** −.06
Hedonism −.18 −.27** −.25** −.19** −.03 −.15**
Achievement −.08 .01 −.11 −.10* −.17** −.02
Power −.11 −.05** −.16** −.20** −.12* −.01
Mn Religiosity 3.79 3.44 3.88 3.59 3.96
(0–7)
Standard .71 .69 .61 .91 .69
Deviation
Note:  The average correlations are calculated giving equal weight to each religious group. Mean
­religiosity is controlled for age and gender.
** p<.01, 2-tailed; *p<.05, 2-tailed

Central to the doctrines and teaching of all religions is an emphasis on


benevolence (concern for the welfare of close others). Most religions also
emphasize universalism (concern for the weak and vulnerable in society).
If religion influences the values of adolescents, one might therefore expect
these two values to be among the most positively correlated with religios-
ity. The quite modest correlations of religiosity with benevolence and uni-
versalism values cast doubt on the impact of religion as a force for value
socialization.
However, Table 4.1 also provides some evidence for religious socializa-
tion. In several instances, the magnitude of the religiosity value correlations
for the same value varies substantially across religions. Nontrivial correla-
tion differences between religions are .38 for tradition, .31 for universalism,
.18 for self-direction, and .18 for achievement. These correlation differences
between religions may reflect doctrinal emphases (encouraging or discour-
aging autonomous thinking) and/or the social organization of the religions
(e.g., activity directed more to the religious in-group or to the wider com-
munity). Religious socialization may express these doctrinal and organiza-
tional differences between religions that thereby influence the associations
110 Schwartz

of religiosity with values. However, these differences may also make various
religions more or less attractive to adolescents depending on their values,
thereby affecting their implicit choices to be religious.
The bottom part of Table 4.1 reports the means and standard deviations
for the religious groups on the religiosity index, controlled for age and gen-
der. An analysis of covariance reveals that self-reported religiosity scores
of Muslim and Eastern Orthodox adolescents do not differ. However, both
have significantly higher scores than the other groups. Each of the other
groups differs significantly from those with lower scores. Not surprisingly,
adolescents who indicated no religious affiliation had a substantially lower
score (2.76, SD = .49). The variance of religiosity is especially large among
Jewish adolescents. This reflects the fact that being Jewish is both an eth-
nic and religious identity. One can be a secular as well as a religious Jew.
High variances of both traditional values and of religiosity account for the
extremely strong correlation between them among Jewish adolescents. A
detailed analysis of the observed differences on religiosity between religions
is beyond the scope of this chapter.

Influences of Adolescents’ Values and Religiosity on Significant


Attitudes
The main reason for considering values or religiosity to be important is
that we assume they influence people’s significant attitudes and behaviors. I
therefore examine next how adolescents’ basic values and/or their religios-
ity influence three significant attitudes that were measured in the European
Social Survey.

Centrality of the Family in Adolescents’ Lives.  Presumably, religion


­strengthens family ties (e.g., Bahr & Chadwick, 1985; Sherkat & Ellison,
1999). We might therefore expect the family to be more central in the lives of
more religious adolescents. Several values are also likely to promote central-
ity of the family. Conservation values, which emphasize maintaining a stable
environment (security), keeping family customs (tradition), and avoiding
conflict in close relationships (conformity), can find expression and ful-
fillment in the family. Among the self-transcendence values, benevolence,
which emphasizes concern for the welfare of in-group (i.e., family) mem-
bers, should also be conducive to retaining strong family ties. However, uni-
versalism values may be unrelated to family centrality because they focus on
the welfare of those in the wider society. Individuals for whom power values
are important are likely to break away from the family because they are con-
cerned with promoting their self-interests even at the expense of others.
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 111

To examine whether adolescents’ values affect the centrality of family


in their lives, I regressed responses to the question, “How important is
the family in your life?” on the six basic values that are potentially most
relevant to social behavior and on gender and age (Table 4.2, column 1).
To assess whether adolescents’ religiosity adds to or even replaces the
influence of values on family centrality, I added religiosity in a second
regression model (Table 4.2, column 2). Security values promoted fam-
ily centrality most strongly and power values reduced it most (Table 4.2,
column 1). Benevolence, conformity, and tradition values were also con-
ducive to family centrality, as expected. Girls consider the family more
central, but age – in the 15 to 21-year-old range – has no effect. Religiosity
added only .7 percent to the variance explained (column 2), replacing tra-
dition values as a significant predictor. In sum, basic values, particularly
security, predicted the centrality of family for adolescents more than their
religiosity did.

Citizenship: Supporting Those Who Are Worse Off.  Virtually all religions
call upon their members to support those worse off than they are. Do ado-
lescents who are more religious respond to this call more than less religious
adolescents do? Does religiosity play a larger or smaller role than basic
values in the endorsement of this call? The most relevant basic values are
universalism that should promote concern for the weak in society and power
that should inhibit sacrificing own interests to support others. Respondents
were asked, “To be a good citizen, how important is it to support those who
are worse off?” Columns 3 and 4 of Table 4.2 show the results of regressing
responses to this question on values and religiosity.
Universalism and benevolence values contributed most positively to
support for those who are worse off, tradition values also contributed pos-
itively, and power values fostered opposition to endorsing this view. Girls
and younger adolescents viewed supporting others who are worse off as
more important. Together, the values, age, and gender explained 10.1 per-
cent of the variance in responses. Adding religiosity as a predictor (Table
4.2, column 4) increased the variance explained to 11.4 percent. Adding
religiosity reduced the contribution of tradition values to insignificance,
reflecting the correlation of religiosity with this basic value. Although reli-
giosity explained an additional 1.3 percent of the variance in the attitude
toward supporting the less well off, its contribution was less than that of
both universalism and benevolence values. The analysis suggests that ado-
lescents’ basic values have a stronger impact on their stance toward this
social behavior than their religiosity does.
112 Schwartz

Table 4.2.  Regressions of Three Significant Attitudes on Religiosity Age, Gender,


and Relevant Basic Values among Adolescents (Betas)

1 2 3 4 5 6

Predictor Centrality Centrality Supporting Supporting Always Always


Variables of Family of Family Those Who Those Who Obey Laws/ Obey Laws/
in Life in Life are Worse are Worse Regulations Regulations
Off Off
Age −.03 −.03 −.06** −.06** −.08** −.07**
Gender .08** .06** −.05* .04* .05** .04*
Security .14** .14** .03 .02 .17** .16**
Values
Power Values −.10** −.09** −.08** −.08** −.09** −.08**
Benevolence .05** .05** .14** .14** .01 .01
Values
Conformity .05** .05** −.04 −.04* .29** .28**
Values
Universalism −.01 −.01 .16** .16** .01 .01
Values
Tradition .06** .03 .07** .03 −.01 −.04*
Values
Religiosity .09** .13** .10**
p value< .001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001
Adjusted R2 .060 .067 .101 .114 .150 .159
Observations 3834 3834 3802 3802 3806 3806
**p<.001, *p<.01, 2-tailed

Citizenship: Always Obeying Laws and Regulations.  Key functions of


religion are to anchor the most important norms of society and to pro-
mote codes of conduct that foster cooperation and cohesion among societal
members (e.g., Durkheim, 1954/1912; Hamilton, 2001). One might there-
fore expect adolescents who are more religious to think it is more impor-
tant to be law-abiding citizens. Valuing conformity and security should also
increase adolescents’ commitment to being law-abiding citizens. How well
do adolescents’ religiosity and values explain this attitude? Responses to the
question, “To be a good citizen, how important is it always to obey laws and
regulations?” provide an answer.
Columns 5 and 6 of Table 4.2 report results of regressing responses to this
question on values and religiosity. Values, age, and gender accounted for
15.0 percent of the variance in this attitude (column 5). Security and con-
formity values promoted commitment to abiding by the law whereas power
values undermined this commitment. Adding religiosity as a predictor
(column 6) increased the variance explained only minimally (.9 percent).
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 113

Religiosity predicted less than security and conformity values. Interestingly,


with religiosity included, tradition values negatively affect commitment to
obeying the law. This negative beta must capture effects of a component of
tradition values not shared with security and conservation values and with
religiosity. That unique component might express a motivation to preserve
traditions that reject the current social order, a phenomenon found among
radical groups (e.g., Gallagher, 1997).

Parental Value Transmission of Values and Adolescent Value


Development
Parents care greatly about influencing their children’s values, although their
success is often quite minimal (e.g., Homer, 1993; Knafo & Schwartz, 2001).
Through which processes do parents influence their children’s values?
Which processes lead to more or less similarity (congruence) between par-
ents’ and adolescents’ value priorities? Building on a model proposed by
Grusec and Goodnow (1994), Knafo and Schwartz (2008) specify two pre-
conditions for parent–adolescent value congruence. First, adolescents must
perceive their parents’ values accurately. Second, adolescents must accept
those values, adopting them as their own. If adolescents perceive their par-
ents’ values accurately and accept them as well, value congruence should
be substantial. However, if they misperceive their parent’s values or reject
those values, congruence is likely to be low. In this analysis, adolescents
are hardly passive recipients of value transmission. Instead, they participate
actively in determining their parents’ influence on their values.

Accuracy and Acceptance as Mediators.  A study of 591 Israeli Jewish fam-


ilies illustrates the effects of accuracy of perception and acceptance of per-
ceived parental values as mediators of adolescent–parent value congruence
(Knafo & Schwartz, 2008). Adolescents (mean age 17.1, SD = .7) responded
twice to the PVQ items. The first time, the standard PVQ was used to infer
their own values. The second time, some 20 minutes later, a modified PVQ
asked how they thought their father/mother would want them to respond
to each item. We used this response to infer the values that adolescents
thought their parents wanted to transmit (i.e., perceived parental socializa-
tion values). Parents reported their own socialization values by completing
the PVQ as they would want their son/daughter to respond to it.
From these three value measures, we derived indexes of accuracy, accep-
tance, and congruence for each of the ten values. To simplify, I average find-
ings across the four combinations of mother/father Χ daughter/son dyads.
Adolescent–parent value similarity was greatest for tradition values. Value
114 Schwartz

congruence was also relatively high for power values. Value dissimilarity
was greatest for hedonism values. Adolescents’ values correlated approx-
imately .81 with their parents’ socialization values for tradition, .44 for
power values, but less than .28 for hedonism, benevolence, universalism,
and achievement values.
Did adolescents’ accuracy and/or acceptance of parental values account
for the levels of value similarity? For most values, both accuracy in perceiv-
ing the values parents sought to transmit and acceptance of those values
contributed to adolescent–parent value congruence. Indeed, the combina-
tion of accuracy and acceptance largely, although not completely, explained
the level of congruence. Across the ten values and four dyad combin-
ations, accuracy had a somewhat stronger impact on congruence than
acceptance did.
Two interesting variations merit comment. The relatively high congru-
ence for power values was due to an especially high level of acceptance.
Adolescents adopted the same orientation to controlling people and
resources they perceived their parents expressed through power values.
Regarding conformity, sons (but not daughters) tended both to misperceive
their parents’ conformity values and to reject the conformity values they
perceived. Thus, sons rebelled against their parents’ normative expecta-
tions, and their rebellion blinded them to the degree of conformity their
parents actually expected of them.

Exposure to Parental Social Circles.  Although both accuracy and accep-


tance contributed to the very high congruence of tradition values, substan-
tial variance in the congruence of tradition values was still unexplained.
This implies that there were other sources of parent–adolescent congruence
as well. One important source was parents’ influence upon the environ-
ment to which their adolescent children are exposed. This is particularly
true in the domain of religion. Parents may choose whether or not to send
their children to religious schools (especially in Israel where there is a state
religious system) and youth groups. Parents typically bring their children
together with the children of the families similar to their own with which
they share religious outlooks. If adolescents acquire tradition values in such
school and peer environments, their tradition values are likely to become
more similar to those of their parents. This may explain the quite consistent
finding that congruence for values related to religion is usually higher than
for other values (Kalish & Johnson, 1972; Miller & Glass, 1989).
Exposure to the social circles parents choose, circles which endorse
values similar to those of their parents, can also increase the accuracy of
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 115

adolescents’ perception of their parents’ values. If the values of their par-


ents’ social circles are distinct from those prevalent in society, these values
will be salient to the adolescents. This helps them to perceive the impor-
tance of these values to their parents accurately. In support of this idea, we
found that accuracy was higher for values that were associated with parents’
religiosity, age, education level, and ethnicity. Endorsement of these values
was distinctive of the social circles of which their parents were a part.
Exposure to the social circles their parents choose can also increase
acceptance of parental values. Endorsement of their parents’ values by other
members of these social circles gives greater legitimacy to these values, mak-
ing them more attractive. Supporting this idea, we found that acceptance,
like accuracy, was also higher for values associated with the parental char-
acteristics that affect participation in distinctive social circles – ­religiosity,
age, education level, and ethnicity.
We did not study parental influence on adolescents’ religious belief
and observance. Research suggests that it is quite strong (e.g., summary
in Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009). The mechanism of parental control over
adolescents’ social circles that applies to value acquisition explains much of
parental influence on religiosity as well.

Types of Values.  Adolescents are more likely to accept some types of


perceived parental values than others. They tend to view values that deal
mainly with personal issues as outside their parents’ legitimate regulation
(Smetana, 2000). Hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, and achievement
values deal with personal issues because their consequences essentially
affect only the actor, not others (Schwartz, 1992). In contrast, adolescents
tend to think it is more legitimate for parents to pressure them with regard
to moral values, those that affect others’ welfare (benevolence, universal-
ism, and power), and values concerned with social conventions and safety
(conformity, tradition, and security). We found that adolescents accepted
their parents’ perceived moral and conventional socialization values more
than they accepted their values concerned with personal issues. Conformity
values, the value most in contention as adolescents seek to establish their
independence, were the exception, with low adolescent acceptance.

Parenting Styles.  I next examine how parenting styles affect parent–­


adolescent value congruence through their effects on accuracy and accep-
tance. Combinations of the two dimensions of warmth (responsiveness)
and demandingness (control) form the parenting styles most frequently
discussed in the literature (Darling & Steinberg, 1993). Authoritative
116 Schwartz

parents are high on both warmth and demandingness. They try to con-
sider the child’s point of view in setting standards, explain what they
demand, and are willing to negotiate. Indulgent parents are high on
warmth but low on demandingness. Autocratic (authoritarian) parents
are high on demandingness and low on warmth. Unlike authoritative
parents, they impose their standards on the child and do not negoti-
ate. Indifferent (permissive-neglectful) parents are low on both demand-
ingness and warmth. The following analyses of the effects of parenting
styles are based on the same sample discussed above (Knafo & Schwartz,
2003, 2005). Parental warmth and demandingness were measured as per-
ceived by adolescents.
The only parenting styles that correlated significantly with parent–­
adolescent value congruence were those that affected both accuracy and
acceptance of perceived parental values. Indulgent and authoritative par-
enting were not related to congruence. Both correlated positively with
acceptance but not with accuracy. The warmth aspect of these two parent-
ing styles may have motivated adolescents to accept their parents’ values.
Yet indulgent parents may not articulate their values clearly enough to
enable adolescents to perceive them accurately. The index of authoritative
parenting was particularly weak. This may account for why, despite the fact
that authoritative parents make clear demands and explain them, this par-
enting style did not affect accuracy of perception.
The warmth (responsiveness) aspect of parenting was measured as a
latent variable based on seven items (Knafo & Schwartz, 2003). Warmth
correlated positively with accuracy, with acceptance, and with congruence.
Adolescents are likely to find interacting with warm, responsive parents
both comfortable and unthreatening and therefore, spend more time with
their parents. They would therefore have more opportunity to see and hear
what their parents value and, being less anxious, be able to better under-
stand the values their parents express. Warmth might also increase their
identification with their parents and motivate adolescents to accept their
parents’ values.
Both autocratic and indifferent parenting correlated negatively with accu-
racy, with acceptance, and with congruence. In Western cultures, autocratic
parenting is accompanied by anger, coercion, and humiliation of children
(Rudy & Grusec, 2001). This is likely to reduce adolescents’ desire to spend
time with their parents, to interfere with their ability to understand the
values their parents express, and to undermine their motivation to accept
whatever values they do perceive. Indifferent parenting provides no clear
expectations or standards from which to infer parental values accurately.
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 117

Moreover, when parental warmth is absent, adolescents are less likely to be


motivated to accept the parental values they do perceive.
Love withdrawal is a specific parenting technique that also relates to par-
ent–adolescent value congruence. Parents who use love withdrawal condi-
tion their affection on their child’s compliance with their demands. Western
adolescents dislike this parenting behavior (Siegal & Barclay, 1985). It pro-
duces anxiety and guilt in children and leads them to avoid their parents
(Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Not surprisingly, love withdrawal correlated
negatively with accuracy, with acceptance, and with congruence (Knafo
& Schwartz, 2003, 2005). The negative emotional responses it elicits may
interfere with adolescents’ understanding of their parents’ messages, cause
them to attend less to these messages and avoid their parents’ presence, and
undermine their motivation to accept their parents’ values.

Conclusion
Examination of the structure of values among adolescents from 30 countries
revealed that the near universal motivational structure of relations among
different values is already present by mid-adolescence. Adolescents experi-
ence the same conflicts and compatibilities among their values that adults
do. This pattern emerges even before adolescence. Socialization into partic-
ular religions with their unique value priorities does not appear to affect the
basic values adolescents distinguish or the way they organize these values
into a coherent system. Separate analyses of Roman Catholic, Protestant,
Eastern Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, and non-religious adolescents yielded
virtually the same motivational structure of values.
Adolescents attribute substantially less importance than adults do to all
the other-oriented values: benevolence, universalism, security, conformity,
and tradition. They attribute substantially more importance than adults
do to four self-oriented values – hedonism, stimulation, achievement, and
power – but differ little in self-direction. Physical development and iden-
tity construction processes, together with social structural constraints and
opportunities, explain the adolescent–adult value differences. Between
mid- and late-adolescence, only small, but meaningful, changes occur in
value priorities.
Regardless of their religion, adolescents who are more religious give
higher priority to tradition and conformity values and lower priority to
hedonism, self-direction, stimulation, and power values than less religious
adolescents do. Religiosity relates only weakly to benevolence and univer-
salism values, despite the centrality of these values in religious doctrines.
118 Schwartz

The findings suggest that how religious adolescents are depends more on
their own value-based choice than on religious socialization. Adolescents’
value priorities have greater influence than their religiosity on the centrality
of the family in their lives and on how important they think it is to help the
needy and always to obey the law.
What may appear to be parental value transmission actually involves
active value acquisition by adolescents. Parent–adolescent value similarity
depends on accurate perception of parents’ socialization values and accep-
tance of these values. Various parenting factors influence value similarity by
affecting accuracy and acceptance. Exposure to parents’ social circles and
parental warmth and responsiveness increase similarity. Autocratic and
indifferent parenting and love withdrawal undermine similarity in Western
cultures.
Overall, what does this chapter and my other research suggest about the
joint roles of values and religiosity in adolescence? Adolescents actively
participate in acquiring their value priorities rather than passively inter-
nalizing them. Adolescents from different national and religious cultures
express their basic motivations through the same set of near universal
values. Although they are born into a particular religion (or none), how
religious adolescents are depends mainly on choices they make based on
their personal values. Among adolescents (as among adults), religiosity
expresses conservation and openness values. However, these are not the
main values that provide autonomous motivation for positive social behav-
ior. Rather, universalism and benevolence values promote such behavior
and power opposes it. Religion typically adds to this motivation primarily
through encouraging conformity to social expectations.
There are, of course, types of religion and religious people that give prior-
ity to a different set of values. The examination of relations between values
and religion presented here points to many questions for future research. I
conclude by mentioning only a few. (1) Do the associations between religi-
osity and value priorities described here hold for all types of religions? What
of nonestablished religions, non-monotheistic religions, religions that focus
on universalistic social action or that emphasize individual spirituality? (2)
Are there really differences between religions in the value priorities of their
adherents? Observed value differences are heavily confounded with demo-
graphic differences between religious groups and with the cultural, social,
economic, political, and historical characteristics of the countries in which
different religions are concentrated. Can impacts of religion per se be iso-
lated from those of these confounds? (3) Does the impact on social behav-
ior and attitudes of religiosity as compared with basic values vary across
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 119

religions? The current study found relatively weak impacts of religiosity


versus values, but it did not separate religious groups. (4) In studying these
three questions and others, do we expect different findings for adolescents
and adults?

Notes

1. See, for example: Beech & Schoeppe (1974); Bilsky, Döring, Niemann, Rose, Schmitz,
Aryus, Drögekamp, & Sinderman, (in press); Boekaerts, de Koning, & Vedder (2006);
Bubeck & Bilsky (2004); Daniel, Benish-Weisman, Knafo, & Boehnke (in press);
Grusec & Kuczynski (1997); Harter (1999); Keats (1986); Knafo & Schwartz (2004);
Roccas (2005); Saroglou & Muñoz-García (2008); Saroglou, Pichon, Trompette,
Verschueren, & Dernelle (2005); Thompson, Meyer, & McGinley (2006).
2. Data downloaded on April 20, 2008 from http://ess.nsd.uib.no/streamer/?
module=download&year=-1&country=&download=\
Cumulative+Data\01%23ESS1–3+-+Cumulative+data+file%2C+edition+1.0\.\
ESS1–3e01.spss.zip. R Jowell and the Central Coordinating Team, European Social
Survey 2002/2003: Technical Report, London: Centre for Comparative Social Surveys,
City University (2003).
3. The coefficients in the index showed partial scalar invariance across all ESS countries
except Turkey. I use the Turkish coefficients Billiet and Meuleman provided for the
Muslim sample. Correlations are comparable across the five religious groups, but cau-
tion should be exercised in drawing conclusions about mean differences.

References

Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens
through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55, 469–480.
Bahr, H. M., & Chadwick, B. A. (1985). Religion and family in Middletown, USA.
Journal of Marriage and Family, 47, 407–414.
Baker, W. E. (2005). America’s crisis of values. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Beech, R. P., & Schoeppe, A. (1974). Development of value systems in adolescents.
Developmental Psychology, 10, 656–664.
Billiet, J., & Meuleman, B. (2007, October). Religious diversity in Europe and its relation
to social attitudes and value orientations. Paper delivered at the European Social
Survey conference on Citizenship and Cultural Identities in the EU, Istanbul:
Turkey.
Bilsky, W., Döring, A. K., Niemann, F., Rose, I., Schmitz, J., Aryus, K., … Sinderman,
J. (in press). Investigating children’s value structures – Testing and expanding the
limits. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.
Boekaerts, M., de Koning, E., & Vedder, P. (2006). Goal-directed behavior and con-
textual factors in the classroom: An innovative approach to the study of multiple
goals. Educational Psychologist, 41, 33–51.
Bubeck, M., & Bilsky, W. (2004). Value structure at an early age. Swiss Journal of
Psychology, 63, 31–41.
120 Schwartz

Collins, W. A., Welsh, D. P., & Furman, W. (2009). Adolescent romantic relationships.
Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 631–652.
Côté, J. E. (2009). Identity formation and self-development in adolescence. In R. Lerner
& L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psychology. Volume 1: Individual bases
of adolescent development (pp. 266–304). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
Daniel, E., Benish-Weisman, M., Knafo, A., & Boehnke, K. (in press). Personal and cul-
ture-dependent values as part of immigrant adolescent identity. In R. K. Silbereisen
& Y. Shavit (Eds.), Living together apart: Migrants in Israel and Germany.
Darling, N., & Steinberg, L. (1993). Parenting style as context: An integrative model.
Psychological Bulletin, 113, 487–496.
Döring, A. K., Blauensteiner, A., Aryus, K., Drögekamp, L., & Bilsky, W. (2010). Assessing
values at an early age: The picture-based value survey for children (PBVS–C).
Journal of Personality Assessment, 92, 439–448.
Durkheim, E. (1954/1912). The elementary forms of religious life. J. W. Swain (trans.)
Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Elliott, G. R., & Feldman, S. S. (1990). Capturing the adolescent experience. In S. S.
Feldman & G. R. Elliott (Eds.), At the threshold: The developing adolescent (pp.
1–14). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gallagher, E. V. (1997). God and country: Revolution as a religious imperative on the
radical right. Terrorism and Political Violence, 9, 63–79.
Grusec, J. E., & Goodnow, J. J. (1994). Impact of parental discipline methods on the
child’s internalization of values: A reconceptualization of current points of view.
Developmental Psychology, 30, 4–19.
Grusec, J. E., & Kuczynski, L. (1997). Parenting and children’s internalization of values.
New York: Wiley.
Hamilton, M. (2001). The sociology of religion: Theoretical and comparative perspectives.
London: Routledge.
Harter, S. (1999). The normative development of self-representations during adoles-
cence. In S. Harter (Ed.), The construction of the self: A developmental perspective.
New York: Guilford.
Homer, P. M. (1993). Transmission of human values: A cross-cultural investigation
of generational and reciprocal influence effects. Genetic, Social, and General
Psychology Monographs, 119, 343–367.
Hood, R. W. Jr., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2009). The psychology of religion: An empirical
approach, 4th Ed. New York: Guilford Press.
Jarvinen, D. W., & Nichols, J. G. (1996). Adolescents’ social goals, beliefs about the causes
of social success, and satisfaction in peer relations. Developmental Psychology, 32,
435–441.
Kalish, R. A., & Johnson, A. I. (1972). Value similarities and differences in three genera-
tions of women. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 34, 49–54.
Keats, D. M. (1986). A cross-cultural model for the development of values. Australian
Journal of Psychology, 38, 297–308.
Knafo, A., & Schwartz, S. H. (2001). Value socialization in families of Israeli-born
and Soviet-born adolescents in Israel. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32,
213–228.
Knafo, A., & Schwartz, S. H. (2003). Parenting and adolescents’ accuracy in perceiving
parental values. Child Development, 73, 595–611.
Values and Religion in Adolescent Development 121

Knafo, A., & Schwartz, S. H. (2004). Identity formation and parent–child value congru-
ence in adolescence. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22, 439–458.
Knafo, A., & Schwartz, S. H. (2008). Accounting for parent–child value congru-
ence: Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence. In U. Schönpflug
(Ed.), Perspectives on cultural transmission (pp. 240–268). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Knafo, A., & Spinath, F. M. (2011). Genetic and environmental influences on girls’ and boys’
gender-typed and gender-neutral values. Developmental Psychology, 47, 726–731.
Lerner, R. M., & Steinberg, L. (Eds.). (2009). Handbook of adolescent psychology, 3rd Ed.,
Volume 1: Individual bases of adolescent development. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Maccoby, E. E., & Martin, J. A. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parent-
child interaction. In P. H. Mussen (Series Ed.) & E. M. Hetherington (Vol. Ed.),
Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 4. Socialization, personality, and social develop-
ment (pp. 1–102). New York: Wiley.
Melech, G. (2001). Value Development in Adolescence [in Hebrew]. Unpublished doc-
toral dissertation. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Miller, R. B., & Glass, J. (1989). Parent-child similarity across the life course. Journal of
Marriage and the Family, 51, 991–997.
Roccas, S. (2005). Religion and value systems. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 747–59.
Rokeach, M. (1973). The nature of human values. New York: Free Press.
Rudy, D., & Grusec, J. E. (2001). Correlates of authoritarian parenting in individualist
and collectivist cultures and implications for understanding the transmission of
values. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32, 202–212.
Saroglou, V., & Muñoz-García, A. (2008). Individual differences in religion and spiritu-
ality: An issue of personality traits and/or values. Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion, 47, 83–101.
Saroglou, V., Pichon, I., Trompette, L., Verschueren, M., & Dernelle, R. (2005). Prosocial
behavior and religion: New evidence based on projective measures and peer rat-
ings. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44, 323–48.
Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical
advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social
Psychology, 25, 1–65.
  (2003). A proposal for measuring value orientations across nations. Chapter 7 in
the Questionnaire Development Package of the European Social Survey. Website:
http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/index.php?option=com_docman&
task=doc_view&gid=126&Itemid=80.
  (2006). A theory of cultural value orientations: Explication and applications.
Comparative Sociology, 5, 136–182.
Schwartz, S. H., & Bardi, A. (2001). Value hierarchies across cultures: Taking a similari-
ties perspective. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32, 268–290.
Schwartz, S. H., & Boehnke, K. (2004). Evaluating the structure of human values with
confirmatory factor analysis. Journal of Research in Personality, 38, 230–255.
Schwartz, S. H., & Huismans, S. (1995). Value priorities and religiosity in four Western
religions. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58, 88–107.
Schwartz, S. H., Melech, G., Lehmann, A., Burgess, S., & Harris, M. (2001). Extending
the cross-cultural validity of the theory of basic human values with a different
method of measurement. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32, 519–542.
122 Schwartz

Sherkat, D. E., & Ellison, C. G. (1999). Recent developments and current controversies
in the sociology of religion. Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 363–394.
Siegal, M., & Barclay, M. S. (1985). Children’s evaluations of fathers’ socialization behav-
ior. Developmental Psychology, 21, 1090–1096.
Smetana, J. G. (2000). Middle class African American adolescents’ and parents’ concep-
tions of parental authority and parenting practices: A longitudinal investigation.
Child Development, 71, 1682–1686.
Thompson, R. A., Meyer, S., & McGinley, M. (2006). Understanding values in rela-
tionships: The development of conscience. In M. Killen & J. G. Smetana (Eds.),
Handbook of moral development (pp. 267–297). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Weber, M. (1905/1958). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York:
Scribner’s.
5 Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young
Persons around the World
Personal Values and Societal Context

Michael Harris Bond, Vivian Miu-Chi Lun, and


Liman Man Wai Li

Abstract
Current satisfaction with life may be taken as a positive achievement for
youth, and considered a prophylactic against antisocial and self-­destructive
behavior. The roles of a youth’s values and religious engagement in the
achievement of satisfaction with life were explored in this study, using the
most recent data from the World Values Survey (WVS). Multinational in
provenance, the WVS affords the opportunity for researchers to explore
the impact of national context on the strength of the linkages from per-
sonality factors (such as values) and social factors (such as religious
engagement) to life satisfaction, thereby providing assurance of the uni-
versality or cultural groundedness of the psychological phenomenon in
question.
In this study, we examined the moderating roles of three societal factors:
human development, government restriction on religion, and social hostility
toward religion. We found that, at the national level, the reported life satisfac-
tion of youth was positively related to the level of development of a society;
at the individual level, it was negatively linked to their level of secularism in
value, but positively to their level of social-religious engagement. The nega-
tive role of secularism did not vary across nations, but the positive effect of
social-religious engagement on satisfaction with life was found to vary as
a function of the level of religious restriction in a society. Specifically, the
effect of social-religious engagement on life satisfaction among youth was
enhanced under the societal conditions of lower government restriction and
higher social hostility toward religion.
Together, these findings suggested that apart from general socioeconomic
development of a society, religious values and practices are also important
predictors of life satisfaction among youth; however, the impact of social-
religious practices appears to be susceptible to the influence of restriction on
religion imposed by a society on its members. We interpret these outcomes

123
124 Bond, Lun, and Li

in terms of youth’s apparently universal search for meaning and the social
support for religious belief provided by shared worship and societal struc-
tures that enhance or restrain the plausibility of religious belief in a secular
world (Berger, 1969).

How do personal characteristics and social practices contribute toward a


youth’s satisfaction with his or her life? How are these contributions affected
by institutional practices of the society in which that youth is living? This
paper attempts to address these questions for a youth’s religiousness, and will
test its ideas empirically by using the relevant data provided by the World
Values Survey (WVS), suggesting how this source of worldwide data may be
used to assess further speculations. In this way, we will be able to address the
universality or cultural groundedness of the individual psychological phe-
nomena being examined, an opportunity that is only available with multina-
tional studies.
As such, this paper is an initial response to Eccles, Templeton, Barber,
and Stone’s (2003) call for more research on the crucial transition period of
youth, as they confront the expanding options available to them in contem-
porary societies. They point out that the search for, and establishment of,
meaning and purpose in life are two crucial axes of adolescent development.
In discussing the personal and social assets linked to positive adolescent
and adult well-being, Eccles and Gootman (2002) include “a coherent and
positive personal and social identity,” “spirituality and/or a sense of purpose
in life,” and “a strong moral character” (p. 66) in their listing. In describing
the available research around their list of such assets, however, Eccles et al.
(2003) hasten to point out that,

“Far fewer studies have investigated the relation of such moral and value-
based characteristics as prosocial values, spirituality, moral character, personal
responsibility, a sense that one is making a meaningful contribution, to one’s
community, and personal identity with other indicators of adolescent and adult
well-being” (p. 399).

In light of this lacuna in our literature, we undertook the current study to


explore the more specific roles of youth values and religious engagement in
their current levels of life satisfaction. To do so, we exploited the data avail-
able from the latest wave of the World Values Survey, as its multicultural
sweep allowed for the examination of moderating influences from national
context on the individual processes being assessed in contemporary youth.
Any conclusions concerning the universality of these putatively general
processes can thus stand on firmer ground.
Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons 125

Satisfaction with Life as Desirable Personal Outcome


We take current assessments of young persons’ satisfaction with life as
our outcome of interest. There is a plethora of research on life satisfac-
tion, with a recent journal, The Journal of Happiness Studies, dedicated to
the understanding of life satisfaction and its associated determinants and
consequences. As higher levels of life satisfaction are associated with lower
levels of depression, suicidal thoughts, anomie, and delinquent behavior, it
has become a topic of much governmental concern, with different nations
developing measurement tools to monitor changing levels of its citizens’
contentment with their current life experience (Kleiner, 2010). There is even
a movement to include some measure of life satisfaction within national
development in a United Nations-sponsored human development index
(Diener & Tov, 2012).
There is considerable variation in life satisfaction across the citizens of
many nations (Inglehart & Klingemann, 2000; Li & Bond, 2010; Morrison,
Tay, & Diener, 2010; Veenhoven, 2005). A basic political goal of responsible
governmental systems, as opposed to failed states preoccupied with inter-
nal stability, is to enhance their citizens’ satisfaction with life by creating
and maintaining societal institutions that address the full range of human
needs. In crafting these initiatives, governmental and civic agencies put
youth front and center, as they constitute future social capital whose inte-
gration into the social system will ensure its flourishing survival.

Individual Characteristics Predicting Satisfaction with Life.  Recent


research from a study involving 3,000 American twins has indicated that
a considerable amount of our life satisfaction is genetically determined
(Lykken & Telegen, 1996). However, which features of genetically deter-
mined individual characteristics are associated with life satisfaction? A host
of such constructs has previously been explored, including dimensions of
the Big-Five personality (see e.g., Kwan, Bond, & Singelis, 1997) and psy-
chosocial needs (Diener & Tay, 2012). In addition to genetically determined
features of individual characteristics, other components have been linked to
life satisfaction, including values (e.g., Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000) and beliefs
regarding the world (Lai, Bond, & Hui, 2007).

The Psychology of Religion


There is a lively empirical discourse on the psychology of religion. Surveying
this literature, Saucier and Skrzypińska (2006) conclude that, “Beliefs about
religious or spiritual phenomena have important effects on human behavior
126 Bond, Lun, and Li

and functioning” (p. 1257). They list the following functions served by reli-
gious–spiritual concerns:

They can provide one with a cognitive map of the world that makes it meaning-
ful. Such worldview beliefs can fill many functions. They provide a paradigm
for, among other things, how the universe began, what the purpose of life is,
and how to understand injustice and death (Argyle & Beit-Hallahmi, 1975);
they may provide a buffer against mortality-based anxiety, enhancing a sense
of safety and security (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986), and they
may satisfy needs for a purpose in life, anchoring a sense of what is right and
wrong (Baumeister, 1991). Moreover, such beliefs connect people, enabling the
sharing of a system of values and rules that is obligatory for a social group
(Kuczkowski, 1993), values and rules that may be a prime guiding force for
actual behavior (Mądrzycki, 1996) (pp. 1257–1258).

Given this broad and fundamental range of human concerns addressed by


religious and spiritual phenomena, one would expect that measures of a
person’s religiousness or spirituality would connect to important life out-
comes. Saucier and Skrzypińska (2006) summarize the available findings
thus: “Religiousness appears to have some positive effects on health and
longevity (Kozielecki, 1991; Powell, Shahabi, & Thoresen, 2003). These
include protective effects with respect to alcohol/drug abuse (Miller, 1998).
Nonetheless, there may be negative effects as well as positive ones (Koenig,
1997)” (p. 1258).
This is an ambivalent conclusion. In a recent (and rare) cross-national
study on religiousness and well-being, Diener, Tay, and Myers (2010) suggest
one reason for this inconclusiveness – they have shown that more religious
persons are happier than less religious persons, but only in more religious
nations. This finding suggests a context dependency to the role of religion in
life satisfaction, making it difficult to draw conclusions from the bulk of pre-
vious research on this topic, most of which is monocultural in provenance.
As opposed to religiosity, spirituality, at least as measured by claiming
that one has a purpose in life, is connected to measures of well-being (e.g.,
Shek, 1993) and helps buffer the impact of dysfunctional parenting on chil-
dren’s satisfaction with life (Shek, 1999). There are, of course, other ways to
conceptualize spirituality, and these conceptualizations with their attendant
operationalisms may relate differently to positive life outcomes, perhaps
even predicting negative outcomes in certain contexts.

Measuring “Religiousness”.  One plausible reason for the ­ambiguity sur-


rounding the positivity or negativity of outcomes predicted by “religiousness”
Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons 127

may lie in the plethora of definitions and measurements that have been
developed by those studying the psychology of religion. Shek (2010) reports
thus:
Based on content analyses of 31 definitions of religiousness and 40 definitions
of spirituality, Scott (1997) reported that the conceptions [of both types of defi-
nitions] were distributed over nine content areas, with no definition containing
most of the conceptions in different domains. These content areas include: 1)
experiences related to connectedness or relationship; 2) processes contributing
to a higher level of connectedness; 3) reactions to sacred and secular things; 4)
beliefs or thoughts; 5) traditional institutional structures; 6) pleasurable exis-
tence; 7) beliefs in a sacred or higher being; 8) personal transcendence; and 9)
existential issues and concerns (p. 343, brackets added).

Each of these nine categories has inspired the creation of associated mea-
sures to assess the strength of that aspect of religious orientation in individ-
uals. Correlating such scores with various outcome measures is bound to
yield various conclusions regarding the positive, neutral, or negative conse-
quences of spiritual orientations.
Adding to the confusion is the possible impact of national–cultural con-
text on any of the reported findings on the psychology of religion  – the
same process could show different strengths, or even reversals, in different
national–cultural groups (see e.g., Li & Bond, 2010). Multinational studies
thus become necessary to ascertain the universality or cultural grounded-
ness to the functioning of religious phenomena in young people. The cul-
tural context surrounding religious enactments by youth probably makes
a difference in how “religiousness” is conceptualized among the young
people.

Distinguishing Spirituality and Religiosity.  A further complicating factor


is the distinction between spirituality and religiosity in conceptualizations
of a person’s religiousness. Saucier and Skrzypińska (2006) describe this
shared territory and its borderlines in these terms:
Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi (1975) defined religion as ‘‘a system of beliefs in a
divine or superhuman power, and practices of worship or other rituals directed
towards such a power’’ (p. 1). The emphasis on worship and rituals implies
community activity that binds or ties people together. Indeed the word reli-
gion comes from Latin religio, derived from ligo, meaning ‘‘to tie or bind’’ …
Definitions of spirituality usually put more emphasis on the individual and on
his or her subjective experience … Shafranske and Gorsuch (1984) defined
spirituality broadly as ‘‘a transcendent dimension within human experience
128 Bond, Lun, and Li

… discovered in moments in which the individual questions the meaning of


personal existence and attempts to place the self within a broader ontological
context’’ (p. 231). Vaughan (1991) provided a useful, more specific, definition:
‘‘a subjective experience of the sacred’’ (p. 105) (p. 1257–1258).

This distinction between religiosity and spirituality is maintained in a per-


son’s self-perceptions and his or her perception of others: lexical measures
of related terms reveal that Americans use two distinct and orthogonal
dimensions or factors in perceiving any person’s “religiousness”; namely,
tradition-oriented religiousness (TR) and subjective spirituality (SS)
(Saucier and Skrzypińska, 2006). These two axes of perceiving religiousness
find their parallels in the personality literature:
…MacDonald (2000) … sought to identify the common dimensions in 11
prominent measures of religious and spiritual constructs. He found five factors:
Religiousness, Cognitive Orientation Towards Spirituality (COTS), Experiential/
Phenomenological (E/P), Paranormal Beliefs, and Existential Well-Being. A
higher-order factor analysis found two factors. One was labeled Cognitive and
Behavioral Orientation Towards Spirituality and included Religiousness and
COTS. The other factor was labeled Non-Ordinary Experiences and Beliefs;
capturing distinctions in previous measures of mysticism, it included E/P
and Paranormal Beliefs. Existential Well-Being, whose content overlaps with
Emotional Stability versus Neuroticism, did not have appreciable loadings on
either higher-order factor. These two higher-order factors appear to correspond
to TR and SS (Saucier & Skrzypińska, 2006, p. 1261).

This two-dimensional distinction has been found in other attempts to make


sense of the literature in the psychology of religion, for example, Emmons
(1999), and so appears robust and of probable importance for personal
functioning.
In the present study, we attempt to extract a parallel distinction from
the measures of religiousness that we have identified in the World Values
Survey. We regard its measure of social-religious engagement as an inter-
personal process reflecting tradition-oriented religiousness (TR) and its
value measure of traditionalism-secularism as an individual characteristic
reflecting subjective spirituality (SS). We propose that each measure of a
person’s religiousness, the interpersonal and the personal, may respectively
contribute toward his or her satisfaction with life.

The Role of “Religiousness” in Enhancing Satisfaction with Life


There is thus a clear empirical distinction in both conceptualizations and
measures between spirituality and religiosity, with the former generally
Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons 129

referring to the domain of internal, subjective experiences and the latter


referring to the domain of activity and practice associated with specific
religious communities. This distinction suggests that the individual sat-
isfaction derived from one’s religiousness may arise from each of these
two sources  – the personal or subjective and the interpersonal or social.
Measures of relevant constructs from each of these two sources may then
each contribute toward the life satisfaction derived from one’s religiousness.
For present purposes, we will then focus on secularism in personal values
as a representative of the personal domain; social-religious engagement, as
a representative of the interpersonal domain.

Values and Life Satisfaction.  Despite the importance of values as a marker


of national–cultural differences (e.g., Schwartz, 1994), there are few studies
attempting to link values with life satisfaction. Of these occasional stud-
ies, most are monocultural (e.g., Bergin, Stinchfield, Gaskin, Masters, &
Sullivan, 1988) and a few bicultural (e.g., Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000). A variety
of value instruments is used in these studies, and the type of participants
varies, so it is difficult to draw reliable conclusions out of this meager yield
from the literature.
Recently, however, Li and Bond (2010) conducted a multicultural study
on the relationship between secularism in values and life satisfaction. Using
the World Values Survey, they were able to assess this linkage across rep-
resentative populations drawn from a total of 75 nations over the first four
waves of the WVS (1984–2004). This wide demographic, temporal and
national–cultural coverage lends considerable confidence to their conclu-
sion about the role of values, namely, “Secularism (in personal values) was
found to predict life satisfaction scores [negatively] at a small but statisti-
cally very significant level in persons from all nations participating in all
four waves of the World Values Survey” (p. 443).
In the interests of cross-study consistency and in light of the multicul-
tural and representative reach of the WVS, we will extend the study of sec-
ularism in personal values and life satisfaction using the fifth wave of the
WVS (2005), focusing upon its sampling of youth across the nations and
reporting results using the measures provided in this survey instrument.

Religious Engagement and Life Satisfaction.  Participation in religious


gatherings, rituals, and ceremonies (including group prayer and fasting) is
a component of social life for many people of different traditions of faith
and spiritual communities. As Li and Bond (2010) maintained, “This reli-
gious belonging provides opportunity for spiritual experience (Schwenka,
130 Bond, Lun, and Li

2000), social support, and a cognitive framework for responding to existen-


tial questions (Ellison, 1991)” (p. 445). Berger (1967, chapter 6) has likewise
argued that shared religious activities conducted with other coreligionists
within an institutional framework provides a “plausibility structure” for
vulnerable religious belief, sustaining the participants’ sense that their
faith is vital, viable, timeless, and true – buttressing belief against the cor-
rosive influence of secularism. Coreligionists help confirm belief and sus-
tain commitment. Those who participate in such religious activities should
thus show higher satisfaction with their current life than those who do not
receive such ongoing social confirmation.

Societal Factors as Moderators of Individual Processes


Leading to Life Satisfaction
Most previous work on cross-national psychology has focused on docu-
menting mean differences in the level of a particular psychological construct
across equivalent populations of respondents. The resulting differences in
“citizen scores” so produced are then related to features of the national or
societal system in which citizens are socialized (see e.g., Bond, 1988, on
values; Leung & Bond, 2004, on social axioms). This approach potenti-
ates the development of theories about how national culture operates to
strengthen psychological dispositions in its members, an effect termed the
“positioning effect of culture” (Leung & Bond, 1989).
An emerging approach to conceptualizing culture’s role is more social-
psychological  – it explores the linkage between psychological constructs,
investigating how a personal or social-psychological variable may relate
to any outcome of interest, including religiosity. So, for example, Fu et al.
(2004) explored the link between reward for application (an individual
belief characteristic) and judgments regarding the efficacy of using assertive
tactics of influence in an organization (a social-psychological outcome). It
was found that the relationship between individual beliefs and preferences
for different influence strategies was moderated by national cultural val-
ues such as uncertainty avoidance and in-group collectivism. This finding
exemplifies how the characteristics of a cultural context may affect indi-
vidual psychological processes.
Such studies of cultural influences on psychological processes may be
bicultural (e.g., Bond & Forgas, 1984) or multicultural, as in Fu et al. (2004).
In either case, what sometimes results from such research is the discovery
that a respondent’s national culture modifies the linkage between the pre-
dictor variable and the outcome of interest. In these cases, what emerges
is an interaction between a higher-level variable, like national culture, and
Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons 131

an individual-level process. National culture is thereby shown to vary the


impact of a predictor variable, making it either more or less important in
generating an outcome of interest. Such findings demonstrate what might
be termed the “induction effect of culture” or the “moderation effect of cul-
ture” (Bond & van de Vijver, 2011).
Bicultural research may demonstrate such interactions between
national culture and individual process by showing a significant interac-
tion effect between culture and an individual predictor on the outcome of
interest (see e.g., Kam & Bond, 2008, on the impact of face loss on rela-
tionship harmony in American and Hong Kong cultures). Multicultural
research with fewer than 10 or so cultural groups cannot, however, provide
internal evidence regarding what feature of the national culture relates to,
or is responsible for, that difference in impact; such evidence can only
come from multicultural studies with a minimum of 10 or more constit-
uent groups – be they classrooms, organizations, districts, or nations – to
ensure sufficient statistical power for the test of higher-level effects (see
Hofmann, 1997).
With an extensive sampling of national cultures, features of the national
system may then be correlated with the size of the impact exercised by the
predictor variable on the outcome (see e.g., Matsumoto et al., 2008). These
features may be derived from “hard” data; for example, human rights obser-
vance or economic growth over a given time period. Alternatively, they may
be derived from “soft” data; that is, citizen scores on theoretically relevant
psychological variables, like the value of traditionalism or the self-construal
of allocentrism (interdependence). In either case, larger multicultural stud-
ies provide us with more reliable conclusions of how and possibly why cul-
ture exercises its impact on social-psychological processes. Bond (2009) has
termed such demanding and complex research “Einsteinian,” as it allows
us to build sophisticated, complex, measurement-based models to explain
culture’s influence on psychological process.

Level of Societal Development.  Contemporary societal development is


regarded as inducing a pervasive secular press on the worldviews of its
members:
By secularization, we mean the process by which sectors of society and culture
are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols … it
affects the totality of cultural life and ideation, and may be observed in the
decline of religious contents in the arts, in philosophy, in literature, and most
important of all, in the rise of science as an autonomous, thoroughly secular
perspective on the world. (Berger, 1967, p. 107)
132 Bond, Lun, and Li

In consequence, one should expect that a more modernized nation would


provide a cultural context that moderates the connection between individual
secularism and life satisfaction. Accordingly, Li and Bond (2010) found that
a nation’s Human Development Index (HDI), as an index of societal devel-
opment, interacted with the psychological link between secularism and life
satisfaction in each of the waves of the World Values Survey, although the
strength of that interaction varied across the four waves in which the survey
was conducted. We will again examine the possible moderating role of HDI
for youth on the links between their secularism in value, social-religious
engagement and satisfaction with life.

Institutional Restriction on Religious Practice.  Another potential influ-


ence of national culture on the link between social-religious engagement
and life satisfaction derives from the strength of a society’s institutional
restrictions on religious practice. Such restrictiveness would make the
enactment of any religious observance counter-normative when com-
pared to societies where freedom of religious practice was guaranteed in
the national constitution and supported by its legal system. In such socie-
ties, an adherent is free to believe and practice whatever religion he or she
may choose because institutional pressure to be nonreligious or to embrace
the state religion is lacking. In such religiously freer nations, we anticipate
that the link between types of religious practice and life satisfaction would
be stronger, since there is no ambivalence generated by societal opposition
toward one’s religious engagement.

Social Hostility toward Religious Groups.  The same reasoning applies to


social systems where violence is enacted toward religious groups, either
because they endorse a religious worldview against a state-mandated secular
ideology, like communism, or because they fail to embrace the state-spon-
sored or majority religion. We expect that the link between social-religious
practice and life satisfaction would be weaker in such types of national con-
text since an adherent’s practice would draw negative social consequences
for his or her well-being regardless of solace and social support provided by
fellow adherents.

An Empirical Demonstration
We tested the aforementioned hypotheses using the Wave 5 data of the
World Value Survey (WVS 2005–2008). Our focus was to understand the
effect of religious values and practices on the satisfaction with life among
youth, so only the data provided by young people between 15 and 24 years
Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons 133

old were selected for analysis. Due to missing data on some or all of the
questionnaire items of current interest, only 9,618 young people (51.8
­percent female) from 43 countries were included in the final analysis.
As for personal values, a person high in traditionalism endorsed author-
ity, the importance of God, and national pride more, but endorsed the
post-materialistic values of self-expression and independence, as well as
autonomy, less; the opposite would be true for a person high in secularism.
A person’s level of social-religious engagement was captured by the ques-
tion, “Apart from weddings, funerals and christenings, about how often do
you attend religious services these days?” This item was used as a measure
of the level of social-religious involvement of the participants. To assess
their level of life satisfaction, participants answered the question, “All things
considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?”
using a 10-point rating scale.

Social Indicators
The Human Development Index (HDI) was used as our measure of the
national context for human development. The HDI was devised by the
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as part of the Human
Development Report. The index includes equally weighted measures of life
expectancy, educational development, and GDP to indicate a country’s level
of development. HDI ranges between 0 and 1, with a higher value indicating
a higher level of development in a society. The index in 2007 (UNDP, 2009)
was used to match the WVS Wave 5 data used in the present research.
The Government Restriction Index (GRI) and Social Hostilities Index
(SHI) were the two other measures of the national context for religious
practice. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is a project involv-
ing the collation of information pertinent to religious practices in differ-
ent societies around the world (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,
2009). According to the report of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public
Life regarding global restrictions surrounding religion, government actions
and hostility toward religious groups are the two main ways in which reli-
gion is restricted in a society. The measure of government restriction in
a society was created through identifying: “(1) constitutional restrictions
or restrictions based in national law or policy; (2) restrictions imposed by
government officials at any level, whether codified in law or not; (3) use of
force or coercion against religious groups by government agencies or their
representatives; and (4) government favoritism toward particular religious
groups” (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2009, p. 31).
134 Bond, Lun, and Li

The measure of societal hostilities toward religions was captured by iden-


tifying: “(1) crimes or malicious acts motivated by religious hatred or bias;
(2) public religious tensions that lead to violence; and (3) religion-related
terrorism and war” (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2009, p. 31).
Multiple indicators, based on data drawn between mid-2006 and mid-2008,
were used to enhance the accuracy of both indexes. The information sources
involve 16 frequently cited reports, including the U.N. Special Rapporteur
on Freedom of Religion or Belief reports, the Human Rights Watch topical
reports, and the Council of the European Union’s annual report on human
rights, which documented religion-related government restrictions and
social hostilities in different societies. Both indexes have a possible range
of score between 0 and 10, with 10 indicated the highest level of religion-
related government restriction or societal hostilities in a society.

Descriptive Statistics.  Fisher-z transformations were applied to the cor-


relation matrixes among the individual-level variables in each country,
and the transformed correlation matrixes were averaged to provide an
overall correlation among the individual-level variables. The correlation
between secularism and social-religious engagement was negative. Life
satisfaction was correlated with secularism and social-religious engage-
ment across nations, but the exact relationships between satisfaction with
life and the proposed predictors were examined together with the other
relevant societal variables in the Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM)
analysis (reported later in this chapter) for more country-sensitive
interpretation.
Table 5.1 shows the correlation among the three social indicators and
the citizen mean scores of life satisfaction, secularism, and social-reli-
gious engagement. Interestingly, the nation-level correlation between life
satisfaction and secularism was positive, whereas the correlation at the
individual level was negative. A similar pattern of reversal was observed
for the country-level correlations between life satisfaction and social-
religious engagement, where the correlation was in an opposite direction
to that at the individual level. These results provide an opportunity to
commit the ecological fallacy whereby one incorrectly infers individ-
ual-level patterns from the country-level patterns; individual-level and
country-level findings require different interpretations (Leung & Bond,
2007).
Considering the social indicators, both GRI and SHI were found to be
negatively related to citizen ratings on life satisfaction. Consistent with the
findings based on the previous four waves of WVS data (Li & Bond, 2010),
Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons 135

Table 5.1  Correlation among the Country-Level Variables

1 2 3 4 5
1. Life Satisfaction (citizen mean) –
2. Secularism (citizen mean) .26 –
3. Social-Religious Engagement (citizen mean) –.41** –.74** –
4. GRI –.32* –.27 .16 –
5. SHI –.26 –.26 .24 .72** –
6. HDI .69** .65** –.71** –.17 –.14

Note:  **p < .01; *p < . 05; N = 43.

the correlation between HDI and life satisfaction was significantly positive
at the country level.

Effects of Individual Characteristics and Cultural Contexts on Life


Satisfaction.  Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM; Bryk & Raudenbush,
1992; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) was used to examine the relationships
between life satisfaction and the other individual-level predictors, and how
these correlations at the psychological level would be influenced by the
social indicators.
Consistent with the findings in some of the waves of the WVS in the Li
and Bond (2010) study, secularism was a significant negative predictor of
life satisfaction; that is, a person endorsing a higher level of secular values
reported a lower level of life satisfaction. Social-religious engagement also
significantly predicted life satisfaction, but positively. Except for the interac-
tion between secularism and social-religious engagement (see Figure 5.1),
all the other interaction terms at the individual level were statistically not
significant.
Among the three social indicators, only HDI was significant in predict-
ing life satisfaction, showing that the relative development of a society con-
tributed to an individual’s satisfaction with life, a finding consistent with a
host of related national-level research (see e.g., Inglehart & Klingemann,
2000).
Gender did not show any effect on individual life satisfaction, alone
or in interaction with other individual-level variables. The interaction
between gender and HDI was statistically significant, however; in socie-
ties with higher levels of development, the level of life satisfaction of males
was slightly higher than that of females but in societies with lower levels
of development, males showed a lower level of life satisfaction than their
female counterparts.
136 Bond, Lun, and Li

6.5
Life satisfaction

6.0

5.5 low social-religious engagement


mean social-religious engagement
high social-religious engagement

1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0


Secularism
Figure 5.1.  Visual depiction of the interaction between secularism and social-religious
engagement on predicting life satisfaction.

The relationship between secularism and life satisfaction was not mod-
erated by any of the proposed social indicators. However, cross-level inter-
action effects were observed in the relationship between social-religious
engagement and life satisfaction. Specifically, both GRI and SHI moderated
the relationship between social-religious engagement and life satisfaction,
albeit in different directions. Figures 5.2 and 5.3, again produced by the
HLM software, depict these interactions. Although GRI and SHI are both
indicators of obstacles to unfettered religious practice in a society, hostili-
ties directed toward religious groups in the society strengthened the bene-
ficial effect of social-religious engagement on life satisfaction.1 As expected,
however, higher levels of governmental restriction on religion appeared to
be detrimental to the relationship between social-religious engagement and
life satisfaction.
These findings indicate that different sources of restrictive forces sur-
rounding religious involvement in a society function differently to affect
how social-religious engagement predicts a person’s satisfaction with life.
Paradoxically, the more proximal contextual factor of hostility strengthened
the link between social-religious practice and life satisfaction; the more dis-
tal contextual factor of governmental restrictions weakened that same link.

Values, Social-Religious Engagement and the Life Satisfaction of


Youth.  Results at the individual level of analysis in this empirical study show
Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons 137

7.53
GRI = low
GRI = median
GRI = high

7.39
Life satisfaction

7.26

7.12

6.99
1.00 2.73 4.47 6.20 7.93
Social-religious engagement
Figure 5.2.  Visual depiction of the interaction between GRI and social-religious engage-
ment in predicting life satisfaction.

7.33 SHI = low


SHI = median
SHI = high

7.21
Life satisfaction

7.09

6.96

6.84
1.00 2.75 4.50 6.25 8.00
Social-religious engagement
Figure 5.3.  Visual depiction of the interaction between SHI and social-religious engage-
ment in predicting life satisfaction.

that lower secularism, higher traditionalism, and higher social-­religious


engagement each lead to greater life satisfaction for contemporary youth;
they are additive in their impact. The interaction between these personal
and social components of religiousness simply indicates that the effect of
138 Bond, Lun, and Li

traditionalism-secularism is more marked for those higher in social-reli-


gious engagement. This enhancement effect is evident in Figure 5.1.
Social-religious engagement in turn is responsive to features of the
national context inimical to religious practice: the interaction between
GRI and social-religious engagement is negative as expected, whereas
that between SHI and social-religious engagement is positive. In other
words, the lower the level of governmental restriction, the greater the
positive impact of social-religious engagement on life satisfaction. The
higher the level of societal hostility against religion, the greater the
impact of social-religious engagement on youth’s satisfaction with life.
Under no national conditions inimical to religion, however, did higher
social-religious engagement fail to predict higher life satisfaction; rather,
under certain national conditions, this connection between social-reli-
gious engagement and life satisfaction was stronger. The generality of the
positive effect for social-religious engagement is clear when examining
Figures 5.2 and 5.3.
Although of tangential interest in this study, the country-level effects
found in this research bear notice: as in much previous work (e.g., Inglehart
& Klingemann, 2000), HDI, like other indexes of national development, is
positively related to its citizens’ levels of life satisfaction. National devel-
opment does not interact with the individual-level variables of tradition-
alism-secularism as it did in Li and Bond (2010) or with social-religious
engagement; all the effects of the previously noted individual variables can
be obtained regardless of a nation’s level of development. Given the larger
number of nations involved in the present study, we can generalize these
findings with greater confidence.

The Bigger Picture: Secularism and Life Satisfaction


Why should a personal valuation of traditionalism, as compared to its
opposite, secularism, be associated with greater life satisfaction? First, we
should note that this relationship is not always positive across all the waves
of the World Values Survey (Li & Bond, 2010), at least not for fully repre-
sentative samples, so this is not a transhistorical, trans-generational rela-
tionship. Whether these effects are confined to contemporary youth could
be assessed with further research, inspired by the present demonstration.
Second, we should also note that secularism is not a strong predictor
of life satisfaction, with the overall correlation accounting for less than 1
percent of the variance between these two variables. This is an increase in
predictable variance, however, that should be integrated into our ­existing
Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons 139

knowledge of the host of other personality factors influencing the life sat-
isfaction of youth.
Third, we should note that the negative relationship between secular-
ism and life satisfaction for youth occurs regardless of any other personal
or societal conditions. Perhaps it is a “contemporary universal” for youth;
indeed, for any generational cohort. Future research, inspired by this dem-
onstration, could assess the generalizability of this finding.
This consistent, negative relationship between secularism and life satis-
faction may be re-construed as a consistent, positive relationship between
traditionalism and life satisfaction. Traditionalism in values, as operation-
ally described in this study, involves the endorsement of a belief in God,
the value of obedience, respect for authority, national pride, and security
as opposed to the more secular emphases on self-determination, indepen-
dence, self-expression, and quality of life. So, the traditionalism associated
with life satisfaction for these contemporary youth has a deferential, submis-
sive quality, embracing religious and other sources of authority. The hunger
for stability and security provided by these bulwarks of support during a
searching stage of life (e.g., Erikson, 1964, on the developmental challenge
of identity versus role confusion or Eccles et al., 2003, on the importance of
meaning in life), and amid the welter of possible alternatives supported by
their less authoritative peers, may be decisive in promoting some degree of
life satisfaction for these young persons.
Berger (1967) has written persuasively of the human need for structure,
providing an endorsable meaning and sense of resolution to the uncer-
tainties of our “throwness” into the world. The religious dimension to this
resolution adds the element of transcendence to the struggle for meaning
and purpose, providing perspective and detachment from pressing worldly
alternatives for a youth’s decision regarding how to live. The religious com-
ponent to some youth’s traditionalism may add to their sense of satisfaction
already sustained by sources of authority in this world.
Such confirmation may be less important for other persons at different
stages of the life cycle. It will be recalled that the occasional reversals of
the positive relationship between traditionalism and life satisfaction in Li
and Bond (2010) was found in representative samples of the population age
groups, and then only for nations high in HDI. Given our present results
for Wave 5, we expect that a reanalysis of youth alone in Waves 1–4 would
reveal the pattern of results observed here, namely (for youth), secularism
in values is always associated with lower level of life satisfaction regardless
of their nation’s HDI.
140 Bond, Lun, and Li

The Bigger Picture: Social-Religious Engagement and


Life Satisfaction
Youth’s involvement in religious activities is consistently associated with
greater life satisfaction. Given that this effect generalizes across the 43
nations of Wave 5, we may confidently claim that the social support pro-
vided by any type of religious community is associated with greater life
satisfaction for youth. This life satisfaction may, of course, arise from our
human desire for association; thus, any social practices for youth would
connect to greater life satisfaction. We believe, however, that it is the confir-
mation of the youth’s particular religious solution to the quest for meaning
that drives this happy outcome.
It will be recalled that the strength of the positive connection between
traditionalism and life satisfaction increases when the individual involves
himself or herself in religious activities. That is, traditional youth are espe-
cially responsive to the satisfaction-promoting effect of social-religious
engagement; secular youth also show higher levels of life satisfaction the
more they are involved with social-religious activities, but the effect of
engagement is stronger for those youth high in traditionalism of values.
This strengthening suggests that those who already endorse a religious
worldview are especially responsive to the satisfying confirmation that
coreligionists can supply.

The Bigger Picture: Impact of Youth’s National Context


As Berger (1969, chapter 6) suggested, social confirmation of one’s tenuous
religious commitment should be especially welcome in a secularizing world
with the wide array of alternative lifestyles and worldviews available. Their
ubiquity makes religious, and hence other-worldly, views of reality less ten-
able. A religious support group becomes especially important in sustaining
religious belief in contemporary youth. Given this historical context, “Only
in a counter-community of considerable strength does cognitive deviance
have a chance to maintain itself ” (p. 32). Youth are thus happier the more
they engage in religious activities with supportive coreligionists.
Contrary to Berger’s speculation, however, is the fact that the comfort
provided by social-religious engagement is now stronger in highly devel-
oped societies than in less developed societies  – regardless of a nation’s
HDI, it is religiously engaged youth who are happier. The social confirma-
tion provided by religious engagement is satisfying at this developmental
stage. Again, future research, inspired by this demonstration, could assess
the generalizability of this finding across the life course.
Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons 141

However, certain other societal contexts support and sustain the strength
of the connection between social-religious engagement and life satisfaction.
Li and Bond (2010) have argued that the strengthening between a psycho-
logical input, like secularism of values for example, and life satisfaction is a
consequence of the stronger sense of worldview confirmation provided in
these contexts. So, in less developed societies, they showed that tradition-
alism was more strongly connected to life satisfaction because the plau-
sibility structures for a traditional worldview are more ubiquitous in less
modernized societies; uncertainty is thus less frequently provoked, and citi-
zens endorsing traditional values are sustained by these structures; they are
more satisfied with their lives.
We believe that the same confirmation dynamic arises for the positive
relationship between a youth’s social-religious engagement and his or her
life satisfaction. As shown in the present research, this social-psychological
process is strengthened in societies where there are either higher levels of
hostility directed toward religious groups or lower levels of governmental
restriction on religion. So, certain features of the national context matter;
there are undoubtedly other features of the national context moderating
this relationship.
It is compatible with our hypothetical “plausibility structures” that, in
societies with lower governmental restrictions on religions, the relation-
ship between religious engagement and life satisfaction should be stron-
ger – there is no direct institutional challenge to one’s religious practices.
However, why should the link between social-religious engagement and
life satisfaction be strengthened in societies where there is active hostility
against religious groups? Surely, this active aggression against religious
groups undercuts the plausibility of one’s religious belief.
Instead, societal hostility enhances the level of life satisfaction that results
from social-religious engagement. So, societal opposition to religion, more
directly and interpersonally expressed, is different in its social-­psychological
impact than is resistance at the national–institutional level. We speculate
that the dynamics of group cohesion change when out-group hostility is
perceived to operate. First, less committed religious group members will
reduce their social-religious engagement. For those who remain, and as
research on realistic group conflict has shown, in-group cohesion will be
enhanced under conditions of hostility practiced against the in-group by
various out-groups (Levine & Campbell, 1972). Ironically, the hostility lev-
eled by out-group persons may act as a confirmation of in-group members’
beliefs.
142 Bond, Lun, and Li

This enhancement may be more apparent than real in a societal context


characterized by such hostility because some in-group members will abandon
their social-religious engagement under conditions of active hostility being
practiced against their group by out-groups. So, only more highly commit-
ted in-group members remain to participate in the threatened group (Hogg,
Adelman, & Blagg, 2010). These more religiously committed individuals then
derive satisfaction from participating in a religious group that practices under
the specter of religious hostility. This winnowing effect would not occur in
societies marked by less hostility, so that the linkage between social-religious
engagement and life satisfaction is somewhat weaker in such societies.

Conclusion
Current satisfaction with life may be taken as a positive outcome for youth to
have achieved and may be considered a prophylactic against antisocial and
self-destructive behaviors. The roles of a youth’s values and religious practice
in the achievement of such a crucial outcome were explored in this study,
using the most recent data from the World Values Survey. As it is multina-
tional in provenance, the WVS enables researchers to explore the impact of
national–societal context on the strength of the linkages between individ-
ual characteristics (such as one’s basic value orientations) and interpersonal
dynamics (such as social-religious engagement) on a youth’s current satis-
faction with life, thereby providing some empirical assurance of the univer-
sality or cultural groundedness of the psychological processes in question.
In this paper, we examined the moderating roles of three national–societal
factors  – a nation’s level of human development (HDI), its social hostility
toward religion, and its government’s restriction on religion – on these indi-
vidual processes. Both a youth’s traditionalism and social-religious engage-
ment associated positively and separately to his or her life satisfaction, an
outcome arising from youths’ need for a structured, transcendent, and socially
supported worldview. The positive effect of traditionalism (the opposite of
secularism) was consistent across nations, but the positive effect of social-
religious engagement on satisfaction with life was found to be qualified as a
function of the two types of religious restriction in a society. Specifically, the
link between social-religious engagement and life satisfaction among youth
was enhanced under the societal conditions of lower government restriction
and of higher social hostility. Thus, a youth’s religious values and social prac-
tices are important predictors of his or her life satisfaction, but the impact of
religious practice appears to be susceptible to the institutional and social sup-
port accorded to one’s religion in his or her nation. They were strengthened
Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons 143

in those societies where institutional restrictions were lower and hostility


toward religions greater, both enhancements arising, we believe, because the
plausibility of the youth’s religious belief is enhanced under such societal con-
ditions generating social support for one’s worldview.
These findings were discussed in terms of youths’ search for spiritual
meaning and their need for social support in this quest.

Notes

1. Given that GRI and SHI are highly positively correlated with each other, we were aware
of the possibility that suppressor effect may be the alternative explanation to the oppo-
site signs of their respective interactions with social-religious engagement. To exam-
ine this possibility, additional HLM analyses were conducted with these two indices
separated. In the model with GRI and HDI as level-2 predictors, it was found that the
interaction between GRI and social-religious engagement was still negative though
non-significant, b = –0.01, p = .14. In the model with SHI and HDI as level-2 predic-
tors, the interaction between SHI and social-religious engagement remained positive
but became statistically non-significant, b = 0.001, p = .81. Therefore, the opposite
signs of the two interaction terms may not be accounted for by statistical artifact.

References

Berger, P. L. (1967). The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion.


Garden City, NY: Anchor.
  (1969). A rumour of angels: Modern society and the rediscovery of the supernatural.
Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
Bergin, A. E., Stinchfield, R. D., Gaskin, T. A., Masters, K. S., & Sullivan, C. E. (1988).
Religious life-styles and mental health: An exploratory study. Journal of Counseling
Psychology, 35(1), 91–98.
Bond, M. H. (1988). Finding universal dimensions of individual variation in multi-cul-
tural studies of value. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 1009–1015.
  (2009). Circumnavigating the psychological globe: From yin and yang to starry, starry
night. In S. Bekman & A. Aksu-Koc (Eds.), Perspectives on human development,
family, and culture (pp. 31–49). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bond, M. H., & Forgas, J. (1984). Linking person perception to behavior intention across
cultures: The role of cultural collectivism. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 15,
337–352.
Bond, M. H., & Van de Vijver, F. J. R. (2011). Making scientific sense of cultural dif-
ferences in psychological outcomes: Unpackaging the magnum mysterium. In D.
Matsumoto & F. J. R. van de Vijver (Eds.), Cross-cultural research methods in psy-
chology (pp. 75–100). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bryk, A. S., & Raudenbush, S. W. (1992). Hierarchical linear models for social and behav-
ioural research: Applications and data analysis methods. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
Publications.
Diener, E., & Tay, L. (2010). Needs and subjective well-being around the world. Paper
under revision for Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
144 Bond, Lun, and Li

Diener, E., Tay, L., & Myers, D. (2010). Religiosity and subjective well-being across the
world and the USA. Paper in revision.
Diener, E., & Tov, W. (2012). National accounts of well-being. In K. C. Land, A. C.
Michalos, & M. J. Sirgy (Eds.), Handbook of social indicators and quality of life
research (pp. 137–157). New York: Springer.
Eccles, J., & Gootman, J. A. (2002). Community programs to promote youth development.
Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Eccles, J., Templeton, J., Barber, B., & Stone, M. (2003). Adolescence and emerging adult-
hood: The critical passage ways to adulthood. In M. H. Bornstein, L. Davidson, C.
L. M. Keyes, & K. A. Moore (Eds.), Well-being: Positive development across the life
course (pp. 383–406). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Emmons, R. A. (1999). Religion in the psychology of personality: An introduction.
Journal of Personality, 67, 873–888.
Erikson, E. (1964). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.
Fu, P. P., Kennedy, J., Tata, J., Yukl, G., Bond, M. H., Peng, T. K. … Cheosakul, A. (2004).
The impact of societal cultural values and individual social beliefs on the per-
ceived effectiveness of managerial influence strategies: A meso approach. Journal
of International Business Studies, 35, 284–305.
Hofmann, D. A. (1997). An overview of the logic and rationale of hierarchical linear
models. Journal of Management, 23 (6), 723–744.
Hogg, M. A., Adelman, J. R., & Blagg, R. D. (2010). Religion in the face of uncertainty:
An uncertainty-identity theory account of religiousness. Personality and Social
Psychology Review, 14, 72–83.
Inglehart, R., & Klingemann, H. D. (2000). Genes, culture, democracy, and happiness.
In E. Diener & E. M. Suh (Eds.), Culture and subjective well-being (pp. 165–183).
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kam, C. C. S., & Bond, M. H. (2008). The role of emotions and behavioral responses in
mediating the impact of face loss on relationship deterioration: Are Chinese more
face-sensitive than Americans? Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 11, 175–184.
Kleiner, K. (2010). Is life getting better? Moving beyond economic measures of well-
being. U of T Magazine, Winter, 29–32.
Kwan, V. S. Y., Bond, M. H., & Singelis, T. M. (1997). Pancultural explanations for life
satisfaction: Adding relationship harmony to self-esteem. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 73, 1038–1051.
Lai, J. H. W., Bond, M. H., & Hui, N. H. H. (2007). The role of social axioms in predicting
life satisfaction: A longitudinal study in Hong Kong. Journal of Happiness Studies,
8, 517–535.
Leung, K., & Bond, M. H. (1989). On the empirical identification of dimensions for
cross-cultural comparisons. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 20, 133–152.
  (2004). Social axioms: A model for social beliefs in multicultural perspective.
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 36, 119–197. San Diego, CA:
Elsevier Academic Press.
  (2007). Psycho-logic and eco-logic: Insights from social axiom dimensions. In F.
van de Vijver, D. van Hemert, & Y. P. Poortinga (Eds.), Individuals and cultures in
­multilevel analysis (pp. 199–221). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Levine, R. V., & Campbell, D. T. (1972). Ethnocentrism: Theories of conflict, ethnic atti-
tudes and group behavior. New York: Wiley.
Religion and Life Satisfaction of Young Persons 145

Li, L. M. W., & Bond, M. H. (2010). Does individual secularism promote life satisfac-
tion? The moderating role of societal development. Social Indicators Research, 99,
443–453.
Lykken, D., & Tellegen, A. (1996). Happiness is a stochastic phenomenon. Psychological
Science, 7, 186–189.
Matsumoto, D., Yoo, S. H., Nakagawa, S., Alexandre, J., Altarriba, J., Anguas-Wong, A. M.,
& Zengeya, A. (2008). Culture, emotion regulation, and adjustment. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 925–937.
Morrison, M., Tay, L., & Diener, E. (2010). Subjective well-being and national satisfac-
tion: Findings from a worldwide survey. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (2009). Global Restrictions on Religion.
Retrieved August 24, 2010 from http://pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/
Issues/Government/restrictions-fullreport.pdf
Raudenbush, S. W., & Bryk, A. S. (2002). Hierarchical linear models: Applications and
data analysis methods (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Sagiv, L., & Schwartz, S. H. (2000). Value priorities and subjective well-being: Direct rela-
tions and congruity effects. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30, 177–198.
Saucier, G., & Skrzypińska, K. (2006). Spiritual but not religious? Evidence for two inde-
pendent dispositions. Journal of Personality, 74, 1257–1292.
Schwartz, S. H. (1994). Beyond individualism and collectivism: New cultural dimensions
of values. In U. Kim, H. C. Triandis, Ç. Kağıtçıbaşı, S. C. Choi, & G. Yoon (Eds.),
Individualism and collectivism: Theory, method and applications (pp. 85–119).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Shek, D. T. L. (1993). Meaning in life and psychological well-being in Chinese college
students. The International Forum for Logotherapy, 16, 35–42.
  (1999). Parenting characteristics and adolescent psychological well-being: A lon-
gitudinal study in a Chinese context. Genetic, Social and General Psychology
Monographs, 125, 27–44.
  (2010). The spirituality of the Chinese people: A critical review. In M. H. Bond
(Ed.), The Oxford handbook of Chinese psychology (pp. 343–366). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
UNDP (2009). Human Development Report. Retrieved August 24, 2010 from http://hdr.
undp.org/en/media/HDR_2009_EN_Complete.pdf
Veenhoven, R. (2005). If life getting better? How long and happily do people live in
modern society? European Psychologist, 10, 330–343.
6 Indonesian Muslim Adolescents and
the Ecology of Religion

Doran C. French, Nancy Eisenberg, Urip Purwono, and


Julie A. Sallquist

Abstract
In this chapter, we provide an overview of our studies that have explored
the relations between Indonesian Muslim adolescents’ religiosity and spiri-
tuality with their social competence and their relationships with peers and
parents. We first reviewed our findings that individual differences in adoles-
cent religiosity and spirituality (SR) was associated with multiple aspects of
competence including positive associations with peer acceptance, prosocial
behavior, regulation, self-esteem, and academic achievement and negative
associations with externalizing behavior, loneliness, and aggression. We then
reviewed studies suggesting that religious adolescents tended to develop
friendships with others of similar religiosity. These associations predicted
that adolescents who were friends with highly religious peers increased
their religiosity over time. Finally, we looked at the interconnection between
parent–adolescent relations and adolescent SR and adjustment. Parental
warmth moderated the relation between parent religiosity and adolescent
SR, and SR mediated the relation between parental warmth, parental religi-
osity, and adolescent prosocial behavior. These results are consistent with our
view that in this highly religious community, religion is strongly associated
with multiple aspects of adolescents’ lives. Second, we argue that adolescent
religiosity must necessarily be understood within a relationship context, an
idea that is consistent with an ecological perspective on child and adolescent
religiousness.

There has been increased interest in understanding the connections


between adolescents’ religiousness and other aspects of their develop-
ment (Oser, Scarkett, & Bucher, 2006). Despite the need to expand the
scope of research on youths’ religiosity across countries and religions,
almost all research on child and adolescent development and religion

146
Indonesian Muslim’s Ecology of Religion 147

has been conducted in Western countries with Christian populations


(Roehlkepartain, Benson, King, & Wagener, 2006). The paucity of research
on Islam and adolescent development is particularly problematic given
the current world instability associated with the rise of radical Islamic
groups and the need to understand youth development within main-
stream Muslim communities.
In this chapter, we explore the connection of Indonesian adolescents’
religiosity and spirituality with their social competence and their relation-
ships with peers and parents. Throughout our discussion, we consider two
underlying themes. The first is the view articulated in the classic work of
Clifford Geertz (1973) that in some highly religious communities, religion
and culture are strongly interconnected such that it is difficult to separate
meaning systems and practices associated with each. Religion is an under-
explored component of cultural meaning systems (Tarakeshwar, Stanton, &
Pargament, 2003), one that may be particularly important for understand-
ing adolescent religiousness, social competence, and parenting within the
Muslim communities of West Java. The relevance of Geertz’s interpretations
to our work is understandable given that his ideas on the interconnection
between religion and culture were in part developed based on his study
of Muslim communities in Central Java. Our second theme is that adoles-
cent religiosity must necessarily be understood within a relationship con-
text, an idea that is consistent with an ecological perspective on child and
adolescent religiousness (Regnerus, Smith, & Smith, 2004). We suggest that
our understanding of adolescent religiousness is enhanced by considering
how religion is connected to adolescents’ daily life and ongoing patterns of
behavior. It is particularly important to understand how religion impacts
relationships with peers, parents, and others. We will expand on each of
these themes in the following sections.
Current researchers of adolescent religion distinguish between spiritu-
ality and religiosity (Dowling, Gestsdottir, Anderson, von Eye, Almerigi,
& Lerner, 2004; Hill & Pargament, 2003; Roehlkepartain et al., 2006).
Spirituality refers to the personal beliefs and practices (e.g., meditation
and prayer) that may be unconnected to an organized religion. Religiosity
involves adherence to the practices of a particular religious community.
Although there is some evidence of the independence of these two con-
structs among U.S. youth (Dowling et al., 2004), we expected the overlap
would be substantial among Indonesian youths given suggestions that peo-
ple’s religiosity and spirituality are likely to be highly associated in cultures
that are very religious and within which there is uniformity of religious
148 French, Eisenberg, Purwano, and Sallquist

affiliation (French, Eisenberg, Vaughan, Purwono, & Suryanti, 2008; Rich &


Cinamon, 2007).

Indonesia
Indonesia is the fourth most populous country and is the home of the largest
Muslim population. The participants in the studies reviewed in this chap-
ter attended public schools in Bandung, a city of approximately two million
inhabitants in West Java. This region is considered one of the most strongly
religious in Indonesia (Bianchi, 2004; Glicken, 1987) and the form of Islam
typically practiced here is similar to that practiced elsewhere in its focus on
the textual foundations of the Koran and its emphasis on the five pillars of
Islam (i.e., testimony of faith, performance of the five daily prayers, fasting
during Ramadan, almsgiving, and making the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca)
(Gade & Feener, 2004). The government is a democracy within which six
religions are officially recognized. Religious affiliation appears on official
identification cards and religion is a required subject in both public and
private schools. Although there have been some calls to incorporate Sharia
“Islamic law” into the judicial code (Bianchi, 2004), there is little public sup-
port for this (Davis & Robinson, 2006). In the year 2000 World Values Survey
of 18- to 24-year-old youth, 100 percent of the Indonesian sample indicated
that religion was very important in their daily life (Lippman & Keith, 2006),
providing further evidence of the importance of religion in this country.
The context within which religion is experienced by adolescents in our
sample differs in numerous ways from that typically experienced by youths
in North America and Europe. Adolescents in our sample attended schools
where almost all students, as well as most of their teachers, were Muslim.
Furthermore, Islam in Indonesia is interwoven with culture and tied into
collectivist patterns of behavior (Cohen, Hall, Koenig, & Meador, 2005;
Snibbe & Markus, 2002), and the distinction between secular and religious
worlds is diminished and religion permeates daily life. Religious practice is
often observable as classmates are aware of mosque attendance, adherence
to prayer requirements, and compliance with fasting.
We expected that religion would be connected with many aspects of
the social life of Indonesian adolescents. This hypothesis is based on the
salience of religion in the lives of West Javanese adolescents, the intercon-
nection between religious and cultural values and world views, and the
extent to which adolescents interact with peers and adults who are obser-
vant Muslims. In the following sections, we review our past research that
assessed the relation between religion and social competence, peer relation-
ship, and parent and adolescent relationships.
Indonesian Muslim’s Ecology of Religion 149

Our Samples
The studies that we describe in this chapter came from two longitudinal
studies, both of which were completed with Muslim students from public
schools in Bandung, West Java as participants. Using Sample 1, we assessed
the relations between religion and social competence and religion and par-
ent–adolescent relationships. Sample 2 focused specifically on the religion
and peer relationships.
Sample 1 came from a study designed to assess relationships between
Christian and Muslim adolescents (Eisenberg, Sallquist, French, Purwono,
Suryanti, & Pidada, 2009). As described by Sallquist, Eisenberg, French,
Purwono, and Suryanti (2010), data were obtained at four different points
in time. After an initial screening (T1), a sample (T2) of 1,254 seventh
grade students, 285 adolescents, including 205 Muslim youth (M = 13.47
years), were assessed and extensive information was obtained from par-
ents, adolescents, teachers, and peers. Approximately five months later at
T3 (M = 13.88 years), data were obtained from 183 eighth grade Muslim
youth. Finally at T4, approximately one year later, 300 Muslim ninth grade
adolescents (M = 14.91 years) were assessed. This sample included 136
adolescents who had participated in earlier assessments and 164 who were
newly recruited from the classrooms of prior participants. All of the par-
ticipants were Muslim, but varied in the consistency of their participation
in expected religious practices.
At T2, 19.1 percent were classified as very consistent, 65.0 percent con-
sistent, 13.7 percent inconsistent and 1.1 percent nonpracticing. The major-
ity of participants in the T2 sample were in the middle class, with 2 percent
lower, 20 percent lower middle, 32 percent middle, 43 percent upper mid-
dle, and 2 percent upper SES levels. There were 46 percent of mothers and
64 percent of fathers who reported having some college education. The
studies that we describe in the following sections used data from different
time periods, a necessity because different measures were administered at
each assessment period.
Sample 2 (French, Purwono, & Triwahyuni, 2011) included 1,010 Muslim
adolescents in the eighth (M = 13.37 years) and tenth (M = 15.36) grades.
One year later, we sought to recruit those participants who remained in
their sample school, yielding a Y2 sample of 889 adolescents. Within the
Y1 population, 1.85 percent reported always performing both the required
and recommended practices, 51.51 percent reported always performing
required practices, and 51.51 percent reported intermittent performance of
required practices; there were no adolescents in this sample who were non-
practicing. The majority of participants were from middle-class families, an
150 French, Eisenberg, Purwano, and Sallquist

assertion supported by the finding that 46 percent of mothers and 56 per-


cent of fathers had some post high school education, 40 percent of mothers
and 36 percent of fathers had a high school education, and 11 percent of
mothers and 6 percent of fathers had a junior high school education.

Islam and the Social Competence of Indonesian Adolescents.  Our work


was guided by the expectation that adolescents’ spirituality and religiosity
would be associated with multiple aspects of social competence, a hypoth-
esis based on extensive prior research conducted with U.S. Christian youth
(King & Roeser, 2009; Oser et al., 2006; Thomas & Carver, 1990). Specifically,
religiousness in U.S. youth has been associated with academic success (Elder
& Conger, 2000; Regnerus, 2000; Smith & Denton, 2005), prosocial behav-
ior and volunteerism (Donahue & Benson, 1995), and in some populations,
enhanced self-esteem (Elder & Conger, 2000). Religiousness has also been
associated with reduced externalizing and delinquent behavior (Benda &
Corwyn, 1997; Blakeney & Blakeney, 2006; Elder & Conger, 2000; Elifson,
Peterson, & Hadaway, 1983) and internalizing behavior (Smith & Denton,
2005).
French, Eisenberg, Vaughan, Purwono, and Suryanti (2008) and Sallquist
et al. (2010) assessed Indonesian Muslim parents’ and adolescents’ rat-
ings of spirituality using items from the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale
(Underwood & Teresi, 2002) and measured religiosity by assessing the
parent and adolescent reports of the consistency with which participants
practiced behaviors expected of Muslim youth in Indonesia (e.g., fasting
during Ramadan, reading the Koran, attending the Mosque, and perform-
ing the five daily prayers). Parent and adolescent ratings of religiosity and
spirituality were loaded onto a spirituality–religiosity (SR) latent construct.
This strategy of obtaining information from multiple informants was used
when possible throughout our studies to address the considerable prob-
lems associated with the exclusive use of self-report data (Patterson, Reid,
& Dishion, 1992).
Our first set of analyses (French et al., 2008) used data from T2 and T3
of Study 1. Because of the short time period between the two data collec-
tion occasions and the fact that different measures came from each assess-
ment period, we did not assess longitudinal changes in these analyses.
In Figure 6.1 are the results from a structural equation modeling (SEM)
analysis demonstrating negative relations between SR and both internal-
izing and externalizing behavior and the positive association with self-
esteem. The externalizing variable was indicated by teachers’ and parents’
ratings of externalizing and parents’ and children’s ratings of minor deviant
Indonesian Muslim’s Ecology of Religion 151

1.00 Teacher-report
(.32) externalizing

Self-report 1.00 1.53


spirituality (.31) Externalizing and (.59) Parent-report
–.94 Problem Behavior externalizing
(–.66)
1.45
2.95 (.74)
Parent-report (.67) Parent-report
spirituality .68 minor deviant
Spirituality behavior
Religiosity (.19)
–.96
2.96 (–.62) Child-report
Self-report (.47) minor deviant
religiosity Internalizing behavior
Behavior 1.60
3.06 1.05 (.48)
(.47) (.34) Teacher-report
Parent-report internalizing
religiosity 1.00
(.37)
Self-Esteem Parent-report
internalizing
1.00
(.85)
Self-report self-
esteem
χ2(28) = 40.24, p = .06; CFI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.05 (90 percent CI = 0.00 to 0.08)

Figure 6.1.  Structural equation model of religiosity and adjustment.


Note: Unstandardized loadings are reported. Completely standardized loadings are
reported in parentheses. Solid lines represent paths that are significant at p < .05. Long
dashed lines represent marginal paths, p < .10. The initial model did not include the cor-
related errors; however, this model did not fit. In response to the modification indexes,
correlations between errors were added to the model.

behavior whereas the internalizing latent variable was indicated by teach-


ers’ and parents’ reports of internalizing. Self-esteem was indicated by the
children’s completion of the general self-worth scale of the Harter (1988)
Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents. Other SEM analyses (see French et
al., 2008) indicated that SR was positively associated with prosocial behav-
ior, peer group status, academic achievement, and regulation. In sum, these
findings provide consistent support for the hypothesis that Indonesian
Muslim adolescents’ SR is associated with multiple aspects of competence.
Using data from the T4 follow-up, Sallquist et al. (2010) found a decline
in mean levels of SR from eighth to ninth grade, a finding consistent with
similar declines reported for Christian adolescents in the United States
(King & Roeser, 2009). Further, eighth grade SR was positively associated
with ninth grade teacher-rated socially appropriate behavior whereas it was
negatively associated with self-reports of loneliness. Changes in SR were
marginally associated with increased prosocial behavior and significantly
associated with socially appropriate behavior. Increases in SR were also asso-
ciated with decreased loneliness. Changes in SR, however, did not predict
152 French, Eisenberg, Purwano, and Sallquist

decreases in either internalizing or externalizing behavior over time, sug-


gesting that more complex casual models connecting SR with adolescent
adjustment may be required. In later sections of this chapter, we expand
upon this theme by exploring the possibility that adolescents’ interpersonal
relationships contribute to these pathways.
These two studies suggest that adolescent SR is associated with multiple
aspects of competence within this culture. We hypothesize that one expla-
nation for these relations is that culture and religion are intertwined and
together provide systems of meanings and values (Geertz, 1973). Standards
of competence are likely grounded within these systems (Ogbu, 1981) such
that individuals strive to meet these standards and others consider those
who do so as successful. The ability to develop relationships with others is
a central component of competence and we argue that within this culture,
religion is also a salient aspect of adolescents’ relationships with both par-
ents and peers.

Religion and Parent and Adolescent Relationships.  Dating from the


classic work of Geertz (1961), most of the research on parent–child rela-
tionships of Muslim populations in Java has been conducted by anthropol-
ogists. Farver and Wimbarti (1995) suggested that Indonesian child rearing
typically emphasizes emotional control and the development of harmoni-
ous interpersonal relationships. Javanese and Sundanese parents (the two
largest ethnic groups in Indonesia) have been described as being highly
indulgent, particularly with young children, and as rarely using physical
punishment (Zevalkink & Riksen-Walraven, 2001). Older children and
adolescents are expected to comply with parental requests (Sarwono, 2005)
and failure to do so has historically been considered a violation of the moral
order (Keeler, 1987; Mulder, 1992). This may be changing, however, as par-
ents in Indonesia, particularly those exposed to Western influences, have
developed more equalitarian methods of relating to their children (Mulder,
1996).
We expected that Indonesian Muslim adolescents’ relationships with
their parents would be interconnected with religion given the arguments
presented previously regarding the pervasiveness of religion within this
culture, the extent to which religion is interconnected with cultural norms
and values, and the importance of religion in daily life. We also expected
parenting to be associated with religion because of the strong focus within
Islam on parenting (Holdon & Vittrup, 2010). Based on her anthropolog-
ical studies in Indonesia, Glicken (1987) suggested that the strong hier-
archical positioning of parents and the expectations that parents must be
Indonesian Muslim’s Ecology of Religion 153

unquestionably obeyed have their foundations in Islam, an idea that is con-


sistent with suggestions that relationships between Indonesian parents and
adolescents incorporate religious aspects.
Based on research conducted with the United States, we expected that
adolescents’ religiousness would be associated with parents’ religious-
ness (Boyatzis, Dollahite, & Marks, 2006; Ozorak, 1989), and that paren-
tal religiousness would be associated with warm relationships between
parents and their adolescent children (Gunnoe, Hetherington, & Reiss,
1999; Schottenbauer, Spernak, & Hellstrom, 2007). We also expected that
parents would be more likely to transmit religious beliefs to their adoles-
cent children if parent–adolescent relationships were warm and accept-
ing. This later hypothesis is based on Bao, Whitbeck, Hoyt, and Conger’s
(1999) findings from the study of U.S. rural families that perceived paren-
tal acceptance moderated the relation between parents’ and adolescents’
religiosity, an effect that was particularly strong for the relation between
mothers and their sons. Further evidence that family environment is asso-
ciated with children’s adoption of religious views came from Myers (1996)
who analyzed telephone survey data comparing the religiosity of parents
with that of their offspring 12 years later. He found that reported parental
happiness was directly related to the religiosity of their children. Parental
happiness also interacted with parental religiosity to predict the religiosity
of their children more than a decade later, suggesting that a warm fam-
ily environment facilitated the transmission of religiosity from parents to
children. Consistent with this hypothesis were the findings of Okagaki and
Bevis (1999) that the relation between parents’ and their daughters’ reli-
gious beliefs, as reported by college students, were mediated by percep-
tions of parent–child warmth and those of Granqvist (2002) that secure
parent–child relationships mediated the relation between Swedish parents’
and adolescents’ religiousness.
We used data from the T4 assessment of Sample 1 (French, Eisenberg,
Purwono, & Sallquist, 2011) to assess how parent religiosity and parent–
adolescent warmth contributed to the prediction of adolescent SR. SR (as
described in the prior section) was indicated by both parents’ and adoles-
cents’ reports of religiosity and spirituality, and parent–adolescent warmth
was defined by parents’ ratings of warmth and adolescents’ ratings of affec-
tion received from mother and from father. As expected, there was a sig-
nificant pathway from parent religiosity to adolescents’ SR and a significant
pathway from parents’ religiosity to parent–adolescent warmth. There was
also a significant pathway from parent–adolescent warmth to SR. Most
importantly, we found that parent–adolescent warmth moderated the
154 French, Eisenberg, Purwano, and Sallquist

relation between parent religiosity and adolescent SR. In other words, the
relation between parents’ and adolescents’ SR was partially explained by the
extent to which they had a warm relationship. These findings add to those
of Bao et al. (1999), Myers (1996), Okagaki and Bevis (1999), and Granqvist
(1998; 2002) that warm and positive parent–child relationships moderate
the relation between parents’ and adolescents’ religiousness.
We also explored how parental religiosity, parent–adolescent warmth,
and adolescents’ SR combine to predict multiple aspects of competence. As
reported in the previous section, we found (using information from T2,
T3, and T4 of the Sample 1 data) that adolescents’ SR was associated with
multiple aspects of competence, including low levels of externalizing and
internalizing behavior, high self-esteem, and prosocial behavior. Thus, in
addition to exploring the extent that parental religiosity, parent–adolescent
warmth, and SR directly predicated aspects of social competence, we were
curious about the possibility that SR might mediate some of these relations.
Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that the associations between
parental warmth and a prosocial latent variable were mediated by ado-
lescent SR. In other words, the associations between parent–adolescent
warmth and these multiple aspects of competence were explained by the
level of the adolescents’ SR.
Evidence that parental warmth moderates the relation between parent
religiosity and adolescent SR in conjunction with the finding that adolescent
SR mediates the relation between parent religiosity and parental warmth
and adolescent prosocial behavior provides evidence in support of our posi-
tion that religion plays an important role in the relation between parent–
adolescent relationships and adjustment. We argue that these findings are
consistent with suggestions that parenting is embedded within the cultural
context and that cultural meaning systems are integral to understand the
relationships between children and parents (Bornstein & Lansford, 2010;
Harkness & Super, 1995). We suspect that within this collectivist and highly
religious culture, the behaviors of parents and children are strongly influ-
enced by the religion that permeates daily life and is interconnected with
cultural meaning systems. In the next section, we review evidence that reli-
gion in this culture is also connected with adolescents’ relationships with
peers.

Peers and Religion.  There is evidence from studies in the United States
that peer relationships are relevant to understanding adolescents’ religiosity
(Regnerus, Smith, & Smith, 2004; Schwartz, Bukowski, & Aoki, 2006) and
may help explain mechanisms by which religiosity and social competence
Indonesian Muslim’s Ecology of Religion 155

are connected (Wallace & Williams, 1997). In this section we review our
research on Indonesian adolescents that pertains to these hypotheses.
Researchers of peer influence have focused on two synergistic processes,
both of which are relevant to understanding the impact of peers on religion
(Prinstein & Dodge 2008). First, youths tend to most often develop friend-
ships and other associations with others who are similar to themselves. This
process, labeled homophily, has been demonstrated with respect to antiso-
cial behavior (Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, Gest, & Gariépy, 1988), inter-
nalizing behavior (Hogue & Steinberg 1995), and academic achievement
(Cook, Deng, & Morgano, 2007). There is some evidence that a similar pro-
cess occurs in U.S. adolescents with respect to religiosity such that adoles-
cents tend to associate with others with similar levels of religiosity (Smith
& Denton 2005). The second process is that peers influence each other in
ways that may lead them to change their behavior, thus leading them to
become increasingly prosocial, antisocial, or academically successful over
time (Prinstein & Dodge 2008). Similar process may occur with religios-
ity. Regnerus et al. (2004) found that the adolescents’ church attendance
was predicted by the church attendance of their friends one year previously.
These results add to those of others (King, Furrow, & Roth, 2002; Schwartz
et al., 2006) that adolescents’ religiosity is associated with the religiosity of
their friends. Adolescents who have religious friends also appear to exhibit
less problematic behavior as illustrated by the findings of Burkett and
Warren (1987) that religiosity appears to influence marijuana use indirectly
through involvement with peers who abstain from such use and Simons,
Simons, and Conger’s (2004) observations that children’s religiosity was
negatively associated with involvement with deviant peers, a pathway that
accounted for the lower delinquency of religious children.

Friends and the Religiosity of Muslim Indonesian Adolescents.  Here we


report on analyses from the Sample 2 longitudinal investigation (French,
Purwono, & Triwahyuni, 2011) that assessed the similarity between the
religiosity of adolescents and their friends, and the possible effects that
friendships and network associations with religious peers might have on
both religiosity and the exhibition of antisocial behavior. All of the students
in the sample were practicing Muslims, although they differed in the con-
sistency with which they practiced the required and recommended reli-
gious behaviors.
The first question was the extent to which adolescents developed friend-
ships and network associations with peers similar to themselves in reli-
giosity. Friendships were defined by mutual nominations. In contrast to
156 French, Eisenberg, Purwano, and Sallquist

friendships that are defined by shared affinities, network associations are


defined by shared engagement in activities; thus, participants and their
classmates were asked to identify those individuals who tend to spend
time together. These reports were used to identify membership in social
networks using the Social Cognitive Mapping method (SCM version 4.0).
Participants self-reported their religiosity using a measure within which
they reported their consistency of exhibiting both required (e.g., perform-
ing the five daily prayers) and recommended (e.g., performing additional
prayers) practices. Adolescents were similar to their friends in their levels
of religiosity, an effect that did not differ significantly by sex. Boys and girls
were also similar to their network associates in their religiosity, but this
similarity was larger for boys than for girls.
It is possible that the similarity between the religiosity of adolescents and
their friends and network associates in their levels of religiosity could arise
spuriously to the extent that religiosity is correlated with other qualities
that underlie friendship and network associations. To address this question,
we used a path model in which we simultaneously evaluated the similar-
ity between adolescents and their friends on religiosity, academic achieve-
ment, antisocial behavior, and popularity. Adolescents were similar to their
friends on all four qualities. Thus, the similarity between adolescents and
their friends on religiosity existed despite simultaneously controlling for
these other variables, an effect that also emerged when adolescents were
compared with network associates on these same qualities.
We then explored the relation of friends’ religiosity to adolescents’ reli-
giosity one year later. For these analyses, adolescents were categorized as
being either consistent in their religiosity (i.e., regularly performing all
required behaviors) or inconsistent in their religiosity. For those adoles-
cents who were inconsistent in the first year of the study, high religiosity of
their friends was associated with them becoming more consistent the next
year. Similarly, for those adolescents who were consistent in their religiosity
during the first year, friendships with religious peers were associated with
the maintenance of this level of religiosity in the next year.
One possible explanation for these results is that adolescents discuss
their religious views with friends and that they are influenced by these dis-
cussions. Some support for this view is provided by Chaudhury and Miller’s
(2008) finding from a qualitative study of Bangladeshi American Muslim
adolescents of the importance of peer interactions in the formation of reli-
gious identities. Furthermore, it is possible that adolescents influence each
other to perform or not perform religiously required behaviors. For exam-
ple, adolescents’ attendance at the Mosque might be in part attributable to
Indonesian Muslim’s Ecology of Religion 157

their friends’ attendance. It is also likely that adolescents who are inclined
to either increase or decrease their levels of religiosity might befriend oth-
ers who support these changes.
We then looked at the relation between having religious friends and net-
work associates and the exhibition of antisocial behavior using data from
the first year of Sample 2. We found that for boys, having both religious
friends and religious network associates added to self-religiosity in predict-
ing desistance from antisocial behavior. For girls, these effects were much
weaker, with only marginal effects for the relation between self- and net-
work members’ religiosity.
The results of the analyses above add to findings from the studies of
U.S. adolescents that relationships with religious peers are associated with
reduced antisocial behavior. Perhaps as suggested by Stark (1996), religious
adolescents contemplating deviant behavior might discuss the extent to
which their behavior is consistent with religious values with their friends
and network associates. Second, because religious adolescents exhibit lower
levels of deviancy than nonreligious adolescents, interactions with religious
peers are likely to be associated with reduced facilitation of antisocial behav-
ior. Consistent with this hypothesis, Simons et al. (2004) found that child
religiosity was negatively associated with involvement with deviant peers.
Third, it is likely that religious youths engage in activities that contribute to
reduced antisocial behavior as well as put them in proximity to peers with
shared interests that they are likely to befriend. In the United States, reli-
giously devoted youth tend to participate in organized clubs and activities
(Smith & Denton, 2005) and engagement in such activities undoubtedly
increases their exposure to other religious youth and may increase their
prosocial behavior and decrease their involvement in unsupervised activ-
ity (Eccles, Barber, Stone, & Hunt, 2003). It is reasonable to suppose that
a similar process might occur in Indonesian adolescents, but this has not
been studied.
The results from these two studies provide evidence that peers tend to
associate both in friendships and networks with others of similar religiosity
and suggest that these associations may impact adolescents’ religiosity and
their exhibition of antisocial behavior. These conclusions must be offered
tentatively, given our inability to test causality using our correlational meth-
odology. Nevertheless, such causal pathways are reasonable given other
findings of the extensivity of peer influence (Prinstein & Dodge, 2008), and
may be extremely important in explaining mechanisms by which individu-
als’ religious beliefs translate into exhibited behavior (Wallace & Williams,
1997). These findings further provide support for a central thesis of this
158 French, Eisenberg, Purwano, and Sallquist

chapter, that is, that the religion of Indonesian youths is reflected in daily
activities and is connected to their social relationships.

Conclusions
We argue that in the highly religious culture of West Java, religion is inter-
connected with worldviews, values, and relationships. Although we believe
that similar processes occur within other religions and in other areas of the
world, we urge caution in generalizing our results obtained from the study
of Indonesian Muslim youth in West Java. We are uncertain whether our
results would also be seen in Muslim youth in other countries. The cultural
context within which Islam exists in Indonesia is substantially different
than that which exists in many other regions and further research is needed
to explore how adolescents in these countries experience religion.
Likely even more extreme is the contrast between the context within
which youths in this study and those in many Western cultures experience
religiosity. All of the adolescents in these studies were Muslim and nearly all
exhibited moderate to high levels of religiosity. They attended schools and
lived in communities where most of the persons with whom they interacted
were also Muslim. Furthermore, as noted throughout this chapter, Islam
in Indonesia is interwoven with culture and tied to collectivist patterns of
behavior (Cohen et al., 2005; Snibbe & Markus, 2002). The strong distinc-
tions that are made between the religious and secular worlds are less pro-
nounced in West Java than they are in many Western countries.
Nevertheless, there are grounds to believe that religion is also inter-
connected with social competence and relationships for youths in North
America and Europe, although perhaps not to the same extent as for
Indonesian youth. As reviewed in earlier sections of this chapter, studies
of North American youths have revealed that religion is related to multiple
aspects of social competence, interconnected with parenting, and associ-
ated with peer relationships.
In our research, the religious involvement of Muslim children and ado-
lescents has been consistently associated with positive outcomes such as
social competence and warm parent–child relationships. It is apparent,
however, that this is not always the case in Indonesia or in other parts of
the world (Kimball, 2002). Boyatzis et al. (2006) notes that religiousness
in some U. S. families is associated with bigotry and abusive parenting. In
Indonesia and elsewhere, terrorist acts have been committed with religion
as a stated justification. In our work, however, we have seen no evidence
that religious involvement is associated with negative outcomes although
Indonesian Muslim’s Ecology of Religion 159

we are cognizant of the possibility that this might be the case for some
outcomes, under select circumstances, in some populations, and for some
individuals.
Findings that religion is interconnected with relationships as well as
activities and daily life point to the usefulness of adopting an ecological
approach to understanding religion in the lives of adolescents (King &
Roeser, 2009). Within this perspective, adolescents’ religiosity occurs within
a context that includes individuals, organizations, activity structures, and
cultural practices, values, and meaning systems. We suggest that such a per-
spective is important not only for understanding the place of religion in
the lives of Indonesian Muslim youths, but also for understanding youths
from other regions and from different religions. It is particularly important
to understand how religion connects with relationships as well as aspects
of adolescent development such as identity and self-esteem. Our study of
influence of Islam within the lives of Indonesian Muslim youth, however,
provides an illustration of the value of using an ecological perspective to
understand adolescent religion.

References

Bao, W. N., Whitbeck, L. B., Hoyt, D. R., & Conger, R. D. (1999). Perceived parental
acceptance as a moderator of religious transmission among adolescent boys and
girls. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 362–374.
Benda, B. B., & Corwyn, R. F. (1997). Religion and delinquency: The relationship after
considering family and peer influences. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
36, 81–92.
Bianchi, R. R. (2004). Guests of God: Pilgrimage and politics in the Islamic world. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Blakeney, R. F., & Blakeney, C. D. (2006). Delinquency: A quest for moral and spiritual
integrity. In E. C. Roehlkepartain, P. L. Benson, P. E. King, & L. M. Wagener (Eds.),
The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence (pp. 371–383).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Bornstein, M. C., & Lansford, J. E. (2010). Parenting. In M. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of
cultural developmental science (pp. 259–277). New York: Psychology Press.
Boyatzis, C. J., Dollahite, D. C., & Marks, L. D. (2006). The family as a context for reli-
gious and spiritual development in children and youth. In E. C. Roehlkepartain, P.
L. Benson, P. E. King, & L. M. Wagener (Eds.), The handbook of spiritual develop-
ment in childhood and adolescence (pp. 297–309). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Burkett, S. R., & Warren, B. O. (1987). Religiosity, peer associations, and adolescent
marijuana use: A panel study of underlying causal structures. Criminology, 25,
109–131.
Cairns, R. B., Cairns, B. D., Neckerman, H. J., Gest, S. L. L., & Gariépy, J. L. (1988). Social
networks and aggressive behavior: Peer support or peer rejection? Developmental
Psychology, 24, 815–823.
160 French, Eisenberg, Purwano, and Sallquist

Chaudhury, S. R., & Miller, L. (2008). Religious identity formation among Bangladeshi
American Muslim adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Research, 23, 383–410.
Cohen, A. B., Hall, D. E., Koenig, H. G., & Meador, K. G. (2005). Social versus indi-
vidual motivation: Implications for normative definitions of religious orientation.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 48–61.
Cook, T. D., Deng, Y., & Morgano, E. (2007). Friendship influences during early ado-
lescence: The special role of friends’ grade point average. Journal of Research on
Adolescence, 17, 325–356.
Davis, N. J., & Robinson, R. V. (2006). The egalitarian face of Islamic orthodoxy: Support
for Islamic law and economic justice in seven Muslim-majority nations. American
Sociological Review, 71, 167–190.
Donahue, M. J., & Benson, P. L. (1995). Religion and the well-being of adolescents.
Journal of Social Issues, 51, 145–160.
Dowling, E. M., Gestsdottir, S., Anderson, P. M., von Eye, A., Almerigi, J., & Lerner, R.
M. (2004). Structural relations among spirituality, religiosity, and thriving in ado-
lescence. Applied Developmental Science, 8, 7–16.
Eccles, J. S., Barber, B., Stone, M., & Hunt, J. (2003). Extracurricular activi-
ties and adolescent development. Journal of Social Issues, 59, 865–889.
doi:10.1046/j.0022–4537.2003.00095.x.
Eisenberg, N., Sallquist, J., French, D. C., Purwono, U., Suryanti, T., & Pidada, S. (2009).
The relations of majority-minority group status and having an other-religion friend
to Indonesian youths’ socioemotional functioning. Developmental Psychology, 45,
248–259.
Elder, G. H., & Conger, R. D. (2000). Children of the land: Adversity and success in rural
America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Elifson, K. W., Petersen, D. M., & Hadaway, C. K. (1983). Religion and delinquency: A
contextual analysis. Criminology, 21, 505–527.
Farver, J. M., & Wimbarti, S. (1995). Indonesian children’s play with their mothers and
older siblings. Child Development, 66, 1493–1503.
French, D. C., Eisenberg, N., Vaughan, J., Purwono, U., & Suryanti, T. A. (2008). Religious
involvement and social competence and adjustment of Indonesian Muslim adoles-
cents. Developmental Psychology, 44, 597–611.
French, D. C., Purwono, U., & Triwahyuni, A. (2011). Friendship and religiosity of
Indonesian Muslim adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 40, 1623–1633.
doi: 10.1007/s10964–011–9645–7.
Gade, A., & Feener, R. M. (2004). Muslim thought and practice in contemporary
Indonesia. In R. M. Feener (Ed.), Islam in world cultures: Comparative perspectives
(pp. 183–215). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretations of cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Geertz, H. (1961). The Javanese family; a study of kinship and socialization. New York:
Free Press of Glencoe.
Glicken, J. (1987). Sundanese Islam and the value of hormot: Control, obedience, and
socialization in West Java. In R. S. Kipp & S. Rogers (Eds.), Indonesian religions in
transitions (pp. 238–252). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Granqvist, P. (1998). Religiousness and perceived childhood attachment: On the ques-
tion of compensation or correspondence. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
37, 350–367.
Indonesian Muslim’s Ecology of Religion 161

  (2002). Attachment and religiosity in adolescence: Cross-sectional and longi-


tudinal evaluations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 260–270.
Doi:10.1177/0146167202282011.
Gunnoe, M. L., Hetherington, E. M., & Reiss, D. (1999). Parental religiosity, parenting
style, and adolescent social responsibility. Journal of Early Adolescence, 19, 199–225.
Harkness, S., & Super, C. M. (1995). Culture and parenting. In M. C. Bornstein (Ed.),
Handbook of parenting (Vol. 2): Biology and ecology of parenting (pp. 211–234).
Harter, S. (1988). Self-perception profile for adolescents. Denver, CO: University of
Denver Press.
Hill, P. C., & Pargament, K. I. (2003). Advances in the conceptualization and measure-
ment of religion and spirituality: Implications for physical and mental health.
American Psychologist, 58, 64–74.
Hogue, A., & Steinberg, L. (1995). Homophily of internalized distress in adolescent peer
groups. Developmental Psychology, 31, 897–906.
Holdon, G., & Vittrup, B. (2010). Religion. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of cul-
tural developmental science (pp. 279–295). New York: Psychology Press.
Keeler, W. (1987). Javanese shadows, Javanese selves. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University
Press.
Kimball, C. (2002). When religion becomes evil. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row.
King, P. E., Furrow, J. L., & Roth, N. (2002). The influence of families and peers on ado-
lescent religiousness. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 231, 109–120.
King, P. E., & Roeser, R. W. (2009). Religion and spirituality in adolescent development.
In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psychology, 3rd
Edition (pp. 435–478). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons.
Lippman, L. H., & Keith, J. D. (2006). The demographics of spirituality among youth:
International perspectives. In E. C. Roehlkepartain, P. L. Benson, P. E. King, & L.
M. Wagener (Eds.), The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adoles-
cence (pp. 109–123). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Mulder, N. (1992). Individual and society in Java: A cultural analysis. Yogyakarta,
Indonesia: Gadjah Mada University Press.
  (1996). Inside Indonesian Society: Cultural change in Indonesia. Amsterdam: Pepin
Press.
Myers, S. M. (1996). An interactive model of religiosity inheritance: The importance of
family context. American Sociological Review, 61, 858–866.
Ogbu, J. (1981). Origins of human competence: A cultural- ecological perspective. Child
Development, 52, 413–429.
Okagaki, L., & Bevis, C. (1999). Transmission of religious values: Relations between
parents’ and daughters’ beliefs. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 160, 303–318.
Oser, F. K., Scarkett, W. G., & Bucher, A. (2006). Religious and spiritual development
throughout the life span. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child
psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development (6th ed., pp. 942–998).
New York: Wiley.
Ozorak, E. W. (1989). Social and cognitive influence on the development of religious
beliefs and commitment in adolescence. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
28, 448–463.
Patterson, G. R., Reid, J. B., & Dishion, T. J. (1992). Antisocial boys. Eugene, OR:
Castalia.
162 French, Eisenberg, Purwano, and Sallquist

Prinstein, M. J., &. Dodge, K. A. (Eds.). (2008). Understanding peer influence in children
and adolescents. New York: Guilford.
Regnerus, M. D. (2000). Shaping schooling success: Religious socialization and educa-
tional outcomes in metropolitan public schools. Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion, 39, 363–370.
Regnerus, M. D., Smith, C., & Smith, B. (2004). Social context in the development of
adolescent religiosity. Applied Developmental Science, 8, 27–38.
Rich, Y., & Cinamon, R. G. (2007). Conceptions of spirituality among Israeli Arab and
Jewish late adolescents. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 47, 7–29.
Roehlkepartain, E. C., Benson, P. L., King, P. E., & Wagener, L. M. (2006). Spiritual
development in childhood and adolescence: Moving to the scientific mainstream.
In E. C. Roehlkepartain, P. L. Benson, P. E. King, & L. M. Wagener (Eds.), The hand-
book of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence (pp. 1–15). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Sallquist, J., Eisenberg, N., French, D. C., Purwono, U., & Suryanti, T. A. (2010).
Indonesian adolescents’ spiritual and religious experiences and their longitudi-
nal relations with socioemotional functioning. Developmental Psychology, 46(3),
699–716. doi:10.1037/a0018879
Sarwono, S. W. (2005). Families in Indonesia. In J. L. Roopnarine & U. P. Gielen (Eds.),
Families in global perspective (pp. 104–119). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Schottenbauer, M. A., Spernak, S. M., & Hellstrom, I. (2007). Relationship between fam-
ily religious behaviors and child well-being among third-grade children. Mental
Health, Religion, & Culture, 10, 191–198.
Schwartz, K. D., Bukowski, W. M., & Aoki, W. T. (2006). Mentors, friends, and gurus:
Peer and non-parent influences on spiritual development. In E. C. Roehlkepartain,
P. L. Benson, P. E. King, & L. M. Wagener (Eds.), The handbook of spiritual develop-
ment in childhood and adolescence (pp. 109–123). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Simons, L. G., Simons, R. L., & Conger, R. D. (2004). Identifying the mechanisms
whereby family religiosity influences the probability of adolescent antisocial behav-
ior. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 35(4), 547–563.
Smith, C., & Denton, M. L. (2005). Soul searching: The religious and spiritual lives of
American teenagers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Snibbe, A. C., & Markus, H. R. (2002). The psychology of religion and the religion of
psychology. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 229–234.
Stark, R. (1996). Religion as context: Hellfire and delinquency one more time. Sociology
of Religion, 57, 163–173.
Tarakeshwar, N., Stanton, J., & Pargament, K. (2003). Religion: An overlooked dimen-
sion of cross-cultural psychology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 377–
394. doi:10.1177/0022022103034004001
Thomas, D. L., & Carver, C. (1990). Religion and adolescent social competence. In T. P.
Gullotta & R. Montemayor (Eds.), Developing competence in adolescence: Advances
in adolescent development (pp. 195–219). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Underwood, L. G., & Teresi, J. A. (2002). The daily spiritual experience scale:
Development, theoretical description, reliability, exploratory factor analysis, and
preliminary construct validity using health related data. Annals of Behavioral
Medicine, 24, 22–33.
Indonesian Muslim’s Ecology of Religion 163

Wallace, J. M., & Williams, D. R. (1997). Religion and adolescent health-compromising


behavior. In J. Schulenberg, J. Maggs, & K. Hurrelmann (Eds.), Health risks and
developmental transitions during adolescence (pp. 444–468). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Zevalkink, J., & Riksen-Walraven, J. M. (2001). Parenting in Indonesia: Inter- and intra-
cultural differences in mother’s interactions with their young children. International
Journal of Behavioral Development, 25, 167–175.
7 Peer Groups as a Crucible of Positive Value
Development in a Global World

Reed W. Larson, Lene Arnett Jensen, Hyeyoung Kang,


Aisha Griffith, and Vikki Rompala

Abstract
Globalization is increasing the challenges adolescents face in developing
coherent prosocial values. In many societies, traditional systems of value
transmission are eroding and youth are exposed to more diverse reference
groups and cultural belief systems. This chapter examines the developmental
processes through which youth work together with peers to formulate values
in the face of these challenges. We focus on organized youth programs as a
valuable arena to understand and support these processes. Using qualitative
longitudinal data from 11 culturally diverse, high quality programs, we iden-
tified two interlinked peer processes of value work. The first process entailed
youth actively opening themselves up to moral realities beyond their own. This
occurred through listening, “talking out,” and coming to empathize with the
personal experiences of others. The second process involved collective analy-
sis. Youth discussed each other’s stories; they compared, challenged, and cri-
tiqued the basis for different value positions.
Piaget theorized that youth develop moral principles through interactions
with peers. This chapter provides grounded theory on how similar processes
function in a global world. Under favorable conditions, peers play powerful
roles assisting youth’s efforts to synthesize hybrid value perspectives. They
pool their collective experiences to analyze and wrestle with the vexing value
issues of a pluralistic world. The chapter concludes with a review of how
similar and differing processes of value development may be enacted across
global cultural contexts.

Globalization is increasing the challenges that adolescents face in ­developing


values. In many societies, adult authority and traditional systems for trans-
mitting values are diminishing (Friedman, 2000; Schlegel, 2011) and youth
are confronted with more diverse value positions. Furthermore, migration

164
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 165

and urbanization place large numbers of youth in multicultural communi-


ties in which they encounter different value systems on a daily basis (Tienda
& Wilson, 2002). A young person, for example, may experience traditional
Muslim, Hindu, or Christian values at home, secular values at school, and
materialistic values in the media.
How do youth form prosocial values in the face of this diversity? Much
has been written about how the global confluence of diverse groups creates
stress and alienation (Berry, 1997; Chao & Otsuki-Clutter, 2011). In this
chapter we examine conscious constructive processes through which youth
facing this challenge are able to develop positive, prosocial values.1 Theories
often describe adolescent value development as a solitary Eriksonian under-
taking. In contrast, we identify processes within peer groups through which
constructive value work is accomplished. To do this, we are going to focus
on peer interactions within organized youth programs (such as arts, tech-
nology, civic, and faith-based programs and youth organizations), a setting
that provides a rich laboratory for observing positive developmental pro-
cesses, including value development (Larson, 2000, 2011). Hosang (2008)
suggests that programs can provide “structured strategic spaces” in which
youth “can make sense of the vexing and contradictory forces that shape
their lives” (p.16).
Why focus on peer processes? Given the erosion of traditional ­authority,
peers often fill the vacuum as a major arena in which youth shape their
values. We know peers can be powerful (Chen, 2011). Volumes of research
show how they can have negative influences. Processes of imitation,
peer pressure, and “deviance training” can increase teenagers’ prejudi-
cial (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000; Gonzales & Cauce, 1995) and antisocial
behaviors (Dodge, Lansford, & Dishion, 2006). Yet the positive role that
peers can play in adolescent development is often underestimated (Allen
& Antonishak, 2008; Newman & Newman, 2001). Research shows that the
majority of peer influence is toward prosocial values (Brown, 2004) and
that peer interactions can enhance learning through processes of reciprocal
scaffolding and co-construction (Rogoff, 1998). In this chapter we advance
the theory that – under the right conditions – peer processes can be a pow-
erful vehicle for value development in a global world.
Piaget (1965) provided preliminary theory on constructive peer
­processes associated with value development. He posited that the expe-
rience of equality and reciprocity in peer relationships creates conditions
in which moral values and principles “impose” themselves on older chil-
dren’s and adolescents’ reasoning. In an expansive passage, he argued that
166 Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala

r­ elations of reciprocity with peers “will suppress egocentrism and suggest


to the intellectual and moral consciousness norms capable of purifying
the contents of the common laws themselves” (p. 395). Interactions with
equals, Piaget argued, can make moral codes logically self-evident and
compelling. Piaget’s conception of these processes, we now realize, was
the product of Western culture, indeed an optimistic enlightenment strain
within that culture. Young people’s moral development involves more than
logical principles. It involves cultivation of moral reasoning adapted to
the nuances of situations, contexts, and cultural meaning systems (Jensen,
2008).
We begin this chapter by providing groundwork for thinking about
­adolescents’ task of value development within a world of diverse values.
Next, we discuss what is known about the conditions needed for positive
value development and examine organized youth programs as an institu-
tional context that can provide these conditions. In the heart of the chapter
we then describe three peer processes that our research suggests can be
vehicles of prosocial value development. We employ a case study of one
American youth program to illustrate how youth can work together to
actively co-construct prosocial values adapted to a heterogeneous society.
In the final section, we then broaden the discussion to consider how these
processes might vary across societal and cultural contexts.

The Challenges Adolescents Face and the New Skills


They Bring to the Table
Adolescence is a key time for youth to begin to inhabit value systems.
Research shows it is a time of flux when values are changing and becoming
internalized (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006; Jensen, 2008). Traditional
societies have long recognized this and held adolescent rites of passage
aimed at passing on value systems to youth (Gilmore, 1990). It is notable
that youth typically participate in these rites as members of a peer group.

Challenges to Value Development in Heterogeneous Societies


In a global world, however, taking ownership of a system of values has
become a more difficult task, one that requires more deliberate agency from
youth. Children may be raised within parents’ value system, yet (especially
as they move into adolescence) they are exposed to multiple moral codes
(Jensen, 2011). These codes can involve fundamentally different assump-
tions, world views, and degrees of priority given to self, community, and
a deity (Jensen, 2008). Youth may face the challenge of reconciling their
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 167

parents’ conceptions of right and wrong with alternative moral codes. They
may face daily situations that pit different value systems and moral priori-
ties against each other: loyalty to clan, sacred traditions, individualism; also
different notions of when and how respect for others is expressed. For youth
from immigrant families and minority groups, the challenges may include
dealing with people and images that denigrate one’s own value system,
practices, and identity (Berry, 1997; Halverson, 2009). Whether a youth
is part of a stigmatized or privileged group, prosocial value development
requires dealing with the injustice of cross-group misunderstanding and
mistreatment.
The stakes are high. Some youth fail to formulate a consistent set of
values. At the psychological level, this confluence of cultures can result in
cultural dislocation (Berry, 1997; Giddens, 2000) and identity confusion
(Jensen, Arnett, & McKenzie, 2011). At the societal level, it can feed inter-
group conflict and lead to a citizenry that is uncommitted to and disen-
gaged from civic participation (Huntington, 2004).
Value development entails the task of understanding how different codes
apply to self and others across daily situations. Youth must begin to sort
out how different moral arguments translate to variegated cultural contexts.
How do you act in a situation when your parents’ values dictate a different
response than the moral codes in force with peers, at school, or in a work
context? How do you “do to others as you would have them do to you”
when the others have been shaped by different life experiences – or when
they disrespect your values?
These are complex questions. In order to comfortably inhabit prosocial
values, adolescents must figure out how to act in contexts where multiple
mentalities and value systems are at play.

The New Cognitive Skills of Adolescence


Although the task is formidable, adolescents become capable of ­developing
new metacognitive skills for doing this value work. They become able to
reason about complex systems. These include systems of abstract principles
(including value systems) (Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Kuhn, 2009).They also
include “messy” human systems; for example, the diverse untidy dynamics
of psychological processes and social transactions. These new skills include
those for thinking about interactions between different kinds of systems
(Fischer & Bidell, 2006), such as interactions between two moral codes –
or between the principles of a moral code and the real-world dynamics of
human relationships. Adolescents start to be able to compare, construct,
analyze, and apply arguments across diverse systems. Given the right
168 Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala

experiences, they become able to think systematically about arguments that


begin from different premises (Kuhn, 2009).
For the task of prosocial development in a heterogeneous world, a key is
adolescents’ expanding potentials for perspective taking: for understanding
other people’s subjective points of view. With the right experiences, they
can learn to better imagine and predict the thoughts, feelings, and actions of
others (Selman, 2003), including others from different backgrounds (Killen,
Lee-Kim, McGlothlin, & Stangor, 2002; Quintana, 1998). Adolescents also
develop the capacity for biographical reasoning. They become able to think
about how the experiences in people’s lives have influenced them: why they
act as they do (Chandler, Lalonde, Sokol, & Hallett, 2003; Habermas, 2011).
Along with this, adolescents gain the potential to recognize the systematic
fallacies and biases in their own thought processes and learn to counter-
act them (Watkins, Larson, & Sullivan, 2007). Although adolescents are
at a novice level, these new and more advanced capabilities allow them to
progressively understand others as moral beings, reacting to situations in
intentional, predictable ways.
These diverse skills – it must be emphasized – are potentials. They can-
not be expected to develop and become elaborated automatically. To learn
to apply them to complex daily contexts requires work. It should also be
emphasized that these skills are acquired over time through many small
steps. There is a broad consensus in developmental psychology that “what
develops” in social-cognitive development is not so much formal logical
operations (as envisioned by Piaget) but a constructed web. As articulated
by Fischer and Bidell (2006), young people accumulate “strands” of knowl-
edge, insights, arguments, elements of skills, and so forth and they con-
nect them together: “a given strand may be tenuous at first” but with added
experience, “it becomes a stable part of the web” (p. 319).
This metaphor of a web is better fitted to the requirements young peo-
ple face in understanding messy human systems in which behavior is con-
textual, contingent, and multilayered. Although not nearly as elegant as
Piaget’s formal structures, this conception of development as a process of
constructing webs will be helpful when we consider how youth figure out
different value codes – and how to apply them across the nuances of daily
situations.

The Task of Value Development


Of course, value development is not entirely a deliberate cognitive pro-
cess. Moral thought and behavior are also influenced by basic human needs
and emotions (although they, too, can be developed). First, neurological
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 169

mechanisms, such as those for attachment and empathy, are believed to


exert an influence toward the development of prosocial behavior and values
(Eisenberg et al., 2006; Laursen & Hartup, 2002). Humans are social crea-
tures, programmed to help each other – at least within their circle of kith
and kin. However, there are other basic dispositions that can compete with
prosocial behavior, such as emotional systems that serve self-preservation.
It is argued that extending prosocial behavior beyond one’s immediate fam-
ily and community may necessitate overriding one’s basic evolutionary dis-
positions toward in-group favoritism (Templeton & Eccles, 2008).
The task of positive value development involves nurturing prosocial
dispositions while balancing needs of the self in accordance with cultural
codes. To become a contributing member of society requires the work of
training oneself when to feel anger, contempt, pity, and benevolence – and
when to suppress inappropriate expressions of these feelings. This is hardly
a new insight: 2500 years ago, Confucius described moral development
as involving a process of refining moral emotions and sensibilities. David
Hume said similar things from a Western cultural perspective. In a multi-
cultural world this may involve cultivating hybrid moral sensibilities that
incorporate multiple value traditions.
This difficult value work is not easily done alone. Youniss (2009) argues
that it is more likely to happen within the context of institutions and through
interpersonal interaction. Youth programs are institutions that generally
see value development as one of their goals; and they see peer interactions
as a mechanism for cultivating it.

Organized Youth Programs as a Peer Arena for


Value Development
The young women in SisterHood,2 a consciousness raising program, were
struggling with the challenges of fitting into a world of diverse values.
SisterHood is in a Chicago neighborhood that has been an entry point for
generations of immigrant groups. About half the young women’s families
were from West African nations and they experienced challenges reconcil-
ing their parents’ values with values they experienced in other parts of their
lives. One youth, Bernita, said her Nigerian mother kept telling her, “You’re
not an American girl. You remember that. You don’t act like an American
girl.” The other youth were African American, and they also faced inter-
generational tensions. The mother of one expected her to adhere to strict
Mormon values. Some SisterHood youth acceded to parents’ values; some
resisted. Many were attracted to materialistic or street values; some were
170 Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala

experimenting with sexuality. All experienced the challenges of growing up


as a black woman in America.
We use Sisterhood to provide a close-up view of one ethnically diverse
peer group’s processes in addressing the challenges of value development.
It is, of course, only one group of youth within one program; and these
youth were coming of age within a particular cultural context: an individu-
alistic society that places a high emphasis on individual agency (Markus &
Kitayama, 2003). However, it is illustrative of other American programs we
have studied and we will give central attention to issues of cultural context
in our final section.

Youth Programs and Value Development


As is true of many organized programs, value development was part of
Sisterhood’s mission. In the United States, most youth programs identify
prosocial value development as one of their goals (Roth & Brooks-Gunn,
2003). This mission of encouraging positive value development appears to
be present in programs across nations, although differences occur in pro-
grams’ philosophies for achieving it and the cultural code of values that
programs aim to cultivate (e.g., Alvarez, 1994; Haedicke & Nelhaus, 2001;
Patel, 2007).
Research confirms that youth programs, indeed, can positively impact
values. Longitudinal and experimental studies in the United States show
significant effects of programs on prosocial behavior (Durlak, Weissberg,
& Pachan, 2010; Mahoney, Vandell, Simpkins, & Zarrett, 2009). In two
surveys, American teens reported substantially higher rates of experiences
that promote prosocial value development in organized programs than in
school classes. These experiences included learning to help others, stand
up for what is right, compromise, and appreciate people from different eth-
nic backgrounds (Hansen, Larson, & Dworkin, 2003; Larson, Hansen, &
Moneta, 2006). Although less complete, survey and qualitative data from
other countries provides evidence of similar effects of programs on proso-
cial values (Alvarez, 1994; Johnson, Johnson-Pynn, & Pynn, 2007).
In our longitudinal qualitative study of SisterHood and 10 other high
quality arts, technology, and leadership programs, we observed these
changes over time.3 First, across programs, many youth described a shift in
their value orientation from “I” toward “we.” They reported becoming less
self-focused, learning to give more attention to other people’s needs and
the common good. Jackie, a 14-year-old, reported that a year before join-
ing SisterHood she had been engaged in antisocial activities: “getting into
fights and getting into gangs … I really didn’t care about people. I had no
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 171

remorse.” However, she said that SisterHood, “surely did help me, because
… this year, I think about people’s feelings more, and how I would feel if
that was me.” Her fighting had diminished and she was no longer involved
in gangs. This value shift from I toward we has been found in other research
on youth programs as one from “atomism to collective agency” (Kirshner,
2009) and “island to archipelago” (Deutsch, 2007).
Second, many youth in our programs reported learning to better under-
stand and appreciate the value codes of others. They described learning to
examine assumptions of different value systems, sort out moral arguments,
and develop moral sensibilities that took this diversity into account. For
example, a young woman at Youth Action explained, “Now I see different
races and I try to talk to them and try to be as friendly as I [would] be to
my own race” (Watkins et al., 2007). A number of youth also said the pro-
grams broadened their sense of responsibility to the wider society – they
developed civic and social justice values (Dawes & Larson, 2011). Latisha at
SisterHood said: “Being in that program makes you want to better yourself
and the community around you.” They widened their circle of empathic and
moral concern (cf. Templeton & Eccles, 2008).

Conditions for Value Development


How do these value changes occur? Before describing the change processes,
it is important to discuss what is known about the contextual preconditions
for these processes. Research (mostly in the United States) indicates that
positive development is most likely in settings that have specific features.
These include supportive relationships and positive social norms; they also
include youth feeling safe, feeling they belong, and having an active role in
what happens in the setting (Durlak et al., 2010; Eccles & Gootman, 2002).
A more focused body of research shows specific features associated with
reduction in prejudice toward and acceptance of outsiders (i.e., expanded
moral inclusivity). Consistent findings across nations indicate that this
value change is most likely when youth interact with members of diverse
groups under conditions of equality, cooperation, and common purpose;
also when adults in the setting support this change (Pettigrew, 1998).

SisterHood as a Setting for Youth Development


The adult leaders of SisterHood, Lynn and Janet, wanted to create ­similar
conditions for facilitating youth’s development of prosocial values. They
also were acutely aware of the challenges these young women faced in a
value-heterogeneous and sometimes hostile society. Therefore, they placed
a high priority on helping members become independent critical thinkers
172 Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala

who were prepared to act on their beliefs. To achieve this goal, they felt that
the conditions within the group and the process of value development had
to come at least partly from the youth.
To this end, at the start of the year, Lynn and Janet asked one of the
returning members to lead a discussion to set the rules the youth wanted to
follow. Youth started with humorous suggestions: “no fighting; no biting.”
Then they came up with a good American list: listening without interrupt-
ing, being nonjudgmental, offering experience not advice, sharing deci-
sion making, upholding honesty and confidentiality. The youth and leaders
reminded each other of these rules over subsequent sessions, sometimes
challenging members who violated them. Over time, these rules became
internalized as group norms. They became part of a group culture that cre-
ated conditions of equality, cooperation, and common purpose (see also
Larson, 2007).
Research on group dynamics indicates that a crucial step in formation
of a well-functioning group is development of mutual trust (Wheelan,
Davidson, & Tilin, 2003). At SisterHood these rules  – this internalized
culture – became the foundation for this trust. Mutual trust in groups cre-
ates a feeling of interpersonal safety, which allows people to take risks and
break out of their egocentric shell (Hollingshead et al., 2005). Midway
through the year, Chantel reported: “We’re like this big group of goofy
people that like to be around each other. We give each other space and we
respect each other’s ideas.” K’sea said of her peers, “like they understand
you and you understand them.” We found that a similar shared culture
and mutual trust developed, in differing degrees, across other programs
we studied.
Research on group dynamics identifies another feature of groups that
may facilitate the difficult work of developing values and learning to apply
them to complex contexts. They can provide beneficial conditions for col-
laborative information processing (Hinsz, Tindale, & Vollrath, 1997).
When there is mutual trust, working groups develop collective memory.
They become better at retrieving past information than when individuals
are alone. Such groups are also more reliable and consistent than individu-
als in how they process information. As a result, they are often found to be
better at formulating solutions to problems. Knowledge, thinking, and crit-
ical judgment are pooled.
In the programs we studied, youth pooled not only their memories
but their newly developing metacognitive skills. They used these skills to
work together on the difficult tasks of value development in a complicated
world.
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 173

Constructive Processes of Value Work


Each weekly two-hour session at SisterHood was focused on a challenging
topic: reproductive rights, discrimination, fathers, lying, anger, and deal-
ing with stress, among others. Our observer described how youth freely
shared intimate experiences and feelings. They also expressed sharp dif-
ferences, for example, on gay-lesbian relationships, sex for pleasure, and
the demeaning stereotypes that the African Americans held of Africans.
Youth sometimes stood up, gesticulating to express their views. Yet these
conversations readily shifted from serious discussion to humor, and then
back again. Youth described their processes of value development within
this give and take.
We chose SisterHood as a central illustration because it was (with one
exception that we mention later, Faith in Motion) the program in which
youth’s work was most directly focused on values. However, we saw simi-
lar value development in the other programs as youth worked on arts and
leadership projects, and we will include some examples. We will also intro-
duce observations from Erica Halverson’s (2009) analysis of a set of theater
programs in which the youth were engaged in constructive value work.
Across these programs we identified three interrelated processes through
which youth described prosocial value change: opening themselves up, col-
lective analysis, and enactment.

Opening Themselves Up: Constructing the Moral Realities of Others


The process of “opening up” enables adolescents to discover new moral
realities beyond their own. At SisterHood, this occurred through an active
process of listening, understanding, and coming to empathize with the
personal experiences of others. Chantel, an African American, described
how her moral perspective was changed by taking in the African youth’s
family stories. She made it sound clandestine: “You don’t know what peo-
ple do behind closed doors. You can only find that out if they are willing
to tell you. So discussing all of that kind of opens you up.” She reported
opening herself up to people from different cultures and nationalities: “to
everybody else that you’re not used to being around.” Across programs,
youth described how hearing and discussing other’s experiences in a safe
and trusting context allowed them to overcome stereotypes and discover
the humanity of others. Straight youth described coming to understand
the subjective worlds of GLBT youth, farm kids to the experiences of
“punks,” and youth from different religions and social classes to those of
each other (Larson et al., 2004; Watkins et al., 2007). Through listening
174 Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala

and actively piecing together the narrative strands of others’ lives, these
individuals and their experiences became vivid, authentic, and morally
significant.
This discovery process, we believe, was aided by the youth’s new meta-
cognitive skills, including those for perspective taking and biographical
reasoning. Opening oneself up is a constructive process. These new poten-
tials enable teens to perform abstract mental operations to understand how
others’ lives shape who they are now (Habermas, 2011). Chantel described
coming to understand how past experiences shaped what the African youth
thought and felt. Youth used their new skills for biographical reasoning to
understand how formative experiences, parents, and culture influence each
other’s moral beliefs and actions. These metacognitive skills helped them
expand their circle of moral inclusivity.
However, this was not just a dry cognitive process. It often involved
emotion, including empathizing with others’ experiences of pain and hard-
ship. Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, and Zhang (2007) describe how emotions
can serve an important developmental function by directing attention to
the causes of the emotion and then stimulating analyses that influence
future emotion and behavior. Chernise recounted exactly this process at
SisterHood. The interviewer asked her to explain what accounted for the
greater sense of civic responsibility she developed in the program. Chernise
then described their experience watching videos in which people had been
treated unfairly – in one case, news footage from an incident in which white
vigilantes dragged an African American man to death behind a pickup
truck. These experiences she said, “make us upset; we cry and we cry as a
group.” The group then discussed the roots of what they felt; in this case,
the pernicious prejudice against people of African descent in the United
States. Chernise said these emotions and the subsequent discussions made
her want to speak up in the future when she witnessed acts of racism. She
was developing moral emotional sensibilities.
Youth often drew on their own experiences as a tool for these empathic
processes. Anthropologist Ronato Rosaldo (1989) describes how empathy
with someone from a different culture is catalyzed by discovery of compara-
ble emotional experiences. Donato at Youth Action reported this empathetic
breakthrough in listening and talking with GLBT youth. He discovered how
similar their experiences of prejudice were to his as a Mexican American.
This discovery, he said, made him stop making gay jokes and start chal-
lenging peers who did. Other youth described these breakthroughs in hear-
ing about the humiliation, anger, absurdity, and joys people experienced in
different life situations (Watkins et al., 2007). They discovered that these
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 175

“others” are not just objective abstractions; they are living, breathing, feel-
ing human beings. Their values and actions had been wrought by powerful
experiences, deserving of moral respect.

Collective Analysis
The process of active opening up included more than individual epiphanies.
It involved deliberative processes of collective analysis. Youth discussed
each other’s stories, asked questions, compared, challenged, and critiqued
the basis for different value positions. Chernise summarized the delibera-
tive process the group used at SisterHood to discuss powerful issues like the
video in which the man was dragged to death:
We just speak on it and try to come up with different solutions … We talk about
it and ask questions like, “Why does this happen?” … We just go around the
group, one by one and we say our different opinions and then like, if we want,
to further someone else’s opinion to our opinion, or ask questions why we feel
this way.
Youth drew conclusions by evaluating and building on the pool of infor-
mation and arguments offered by the group. In interviews, they attributed
their value changes to comparing value positions, defending their opinions,
“talking it out,” and combining their different perspectives.
A frequent topic of youth’s collective deliberations at SisterHood was
their parents and their parents’ traditional values. K’sea, whose parents
came from Ghana, said of her father: “I kind of see him as an individual
who is stuck on traditions and the whole Ghana tradition and a lot of stuff
like that. But other people telling me about their experiences with their
fathers made me appreciate what he does.”
By comparing her experiences with others’ (including joking about
their parents’ strange ways), K’sea said she came to have a more accepting
understanding of her father and his firmly held values. Similarly, in her
first interview, Bernita expressed dissonance because her mother (from
Cameroon) “doesn’t want anything to do with America.” Later, however,
she described coming to understand and become more accepting of her
mother’s values and worldview, partly because she was able to hear insider
reports on American parents. She explained: “People got to see how my
mom was, and I got to see how – to compare.” Just as youth came to see
diverse peers as moral entities, they came to see parents through deliber-
ative analysis. They opened their value frameworks to encompass wider
perspectives.
Again we suggest that the new cognitive skills of adolescence are at
work. These youth appeared to be using their new skills to examine the
176 Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala

assumptions behind value positions, analyze the parents’ value systems, and
modify their own value constructions to be more inclusive.
Perhaps the most challenging value work is dealing with people’s neg-
ative views of one’s own group (Phinney & Kohatsu, 1997). We have
already discussed how youth at SisterHood talked through their reactions
to a horrifying video of an African American being dragged to death. In
research on youth theater programs, Halverson (2009) describes a more
structured deliberative process of value work through which youth from
marginalized groups addressed these issues. This process began with each
youth bringing in an autobiographical or other story related to a focal
topic youth had selected. Focal topics included immigration, racial dis-
crimination, and being gay in America. The youth then identified and
analyzed the underlying elements of episodes that cut across their sepa-
rate stories, including both positive experiences (the strengths of immi-
grant families) and negative experiences (episodes that typify prejudices
or how their group is perceived by the majority of society). In the next
step, the youth selected, reshaped, and fused these stories into a collec-
tive script that, for example, addressed the challenges faced by immigrant
Mexican youth in the United States. These scripts often contained coun-
ter-narratives in which patterns of prejudice were exposed and that posi-
tioned the youth as moral agents. This deliberative process, Halverson
reports, allows youth to critique different value positions, including neg-
ative representations of themselves. It also allows them to recast these
representations in the final script in ways that articulate values. As in the
programs we studied, emotions contributed to this deliberative process,
and were shaped by it.
These collective analyses had some resemblance to the collective peer
processes that Piaget described. However, in addition to logic, youth were
employing cultural reasoning that considered value positions in relationship
to multiple moral codes. Often youth’s analyses led them to syntheses of par-
ents’ and others’ values. Youth were constructing hybrid moral sensibilities.

Enactment
The first two peer processes in the youth’s value work involved thinking and
feeling. The third process entailed enactment of values in a social arena.
This is an important step. To be meaningful, values have to survive the test
of being operationalized in real-life contexts. Indeed, research shows that
values are as likely to follow from actions as they are to produce actions
(Allen & Antonishak, 2008). Our data suggested the two worked together:
that youth refined values through practice.
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 177

One way youth did this was through addressing real-world dilemmas.
Members of SisterHood confronted one of these dilemmas when several
members had not sold the group’s agreed-upon quota of candy for their
fundraiser. This was hard because it was a breach of trust within the group.
(In one case, a girl sold her quota but her parents had found the money and
used it to buy food.) After much deliberation, they decided they had to be
firm and stick to their initial decision to exclude people from their final
retreat if they had not done their part. Cassandra said they had learned how
important it is to talk directly to the people involved, rather than ignoring
the problem or using it as an excuse to not do their own part. Real-life situ-
ations like this required youth to learn the pragmatics of applying values to
complex contexts.
Youth also reported value development from sticking up for their val-
ues and beliefs. Jade at SisterHood described the youth’s interactions in the
program “as a test for the real world.” It was a chance to practice and learn
how to deal with people of different races and religions. Quite a number of
youth in the activism programs we studied described learning to “speak up”
for their values; for example, learning to stand up against bigotry with peers
(Watkins et al., 2007) or to lobby public officials for a cause they believed
in (Larson & Angus, 2011). This process of standing up for values was also
important in the theater and film programs described by Halverson (2009).
By enacting stories that identified injustices and expressed their values,
youth were articulating their beliefs to an audience.
Enactment moves one from possessing abstract values to taking stances
as a moral actor. Youth learned to express and manage their values in the
face of disagreement and stigmatization.

Co-constructing Values in a Heterogeneous World


Peers, we have argued, can provide a powerful crucible for youth’s work of
constructing positive values in a world of diverse value systems. When con-
ditions are right, peers can work effectively together to sort through argu-
ments, emotions, moral priorities, and prejudices – and develop prosocial
values applied to the complex situations of daily life.
In this final section, we first review the peer-driven processes that we
described and ask how they might be similar or different across cultural
contexts that have different norms for peer behavior. Second, we consider
the role of institutions, such as youth programs, in facilitating peer value
work: how might the processes and their outcomes vary as a function of
different institutional philosophies and staff practices?
178 Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala

The Power of Peers and How It Might Vary across Cultures


Researchers examining how peers contribute to adolescent value change
have typically looked for simple mechanisms – imitation, conformity, mod-
eling – unidirectional influences from peers to youth.4 Yet peer influence,
Brown, Bakken, Ameringer, and Mahon (2008) argue, almost always entails
transactional processes; multiple processes often operate simultaneously.
Our analyses – based primarily on American programs – suggest how
peer groups can employ such transactional processes for constructive value
development. Youth mobilize their new capacities for perspective taking
to expand their understanding of and empathy for people different from
themselves. They draw on their new metacognitive skills to compare, con-
trast, and challenge. They try out values on each other. Over time, we sug-
gest, these iterative transactions build “constructive webs” of integrated and
operative values adapted to the situations of their lives.
These co-creative peer processes, we argue, are especially suited to the
challenges of coming of age in a heterogeneous world. Decades of research
has shown that the work done by effective small groups entail broadband,
eclectic processes (Magen & Mangiardi, 2005). In our view, this eclecticism
is exactly what makes them valuable in a complex world. Peer processing
helped youth to do cross-paradigm work. In our examples, youth listened to
and opened themselves up to emotionally charged stories from unfamiliar
frameworks. They allowed each other to hold and express different value
positions. They pooled their collective experiences to analyze the diverse
situational, biographical, and cultural contexts of value issues. They worked
separately (parallel processing) and together to wrestle with the vexing con-
tradictions of a complex society.
However, how prevalent are these constructive peer processes beyond the
limited set of the mostly American contexts we have considered? At a gen-
eral level, we can point to numerous examples of co-constructive peer value
work across the world, including outside adult-structured institutions. One
can think of the many virtual peer groups flourishing on social networking
sites that, at least in some instances, allow youth to do positive value work
(e.g., Tynes, 2007). As we were finishing this article in early 2011, youth in
Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and other Middle Eastern countries used social
media for collective information-sharing, analysis, and planning to coor-
dinate political protest. Other examples of these co-constructive processes
include young people’s development of local genres of hip-hop music as
vehicles to explore values (Mitchell, 2001) and their development of faith
communities that help them navigate between a religious heritage and con-
temporary life (Freeman, 2009).5
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 179

It is essential, however, to consider cultural and other factors that might


alter, facilitate, or inhibit these constructive peer dynamics. These fac-
tors include differences in the normative structure of peer groups (e.g.,
how equal vs. hierarchical relationships are) and the normative functions
of such group – what youth expect to happen in peer interactions. Let us
speculate on how these might influence the three constructive processes we
identified.

Opening Themselves Up.  We first observed a process through which youth


actively listened to and opened themselves up to differing moral realities.
Might this process be different (or less frequent) in cultures in which norms
for peer relationships differ? American peer norms encourage individual
initiative, imaginative activities, and self-expression  – types of behavior
that might be necessary to this process. Yet Chen, Chung, and Hsiao (2009)
cite findings suggesting that these three types of behavior are less norma-
tive among peers in Latin America, Africa, and East Asia than in North
America. They suggest that in China, for example, the cultural emphasis on
social harmony, modesty, and self-control discourages individual expres-
sion. Such factors might well inhibit the sharing of personal feelings and
stories that appeared to be integral to the processes at SisterHood.6 Chen
(2011), however, also finds that the norms for peer relationships in China
are changing in ways that reward self-assertion and self-expression, which
leads to many provocative questions.

Collective Analysis.  We also found that constructive processes at


SisterHood and other American programs included comparing, talking out,
and analyzing topics (such as the different values of their parents). Research
shows that peer norms in East Asian cultures place a high emphasis on pro-
social cooperative behavior (Chen et al., 2009). This suggests the hypothesis
that, under the right conditions, Asian youth might be more capable than
American youth of working together on this type of analytic value work.

Enactment.  Third, we observed a process in which youth developed values


by trying them out with each other and sometimes with people outside the
program. Cultural differences in social initiative and self-expression might
influence whether and how this process might play out across contexts.
Cultures may also differ in the opportunities and encouragement they pro-
vide for youth to try out new value positions, especially with adults.
This discussion is highly speculative. Research is needed and we should
be prepared to be surprised. There may be entirely different processes – as well
180 Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala

as outcomes – in different cultural contexts as a product of differing norms


for peer interactions, as well as social conditions that influence peer inter-
actions (e.g., a history of conflict between ethnic groups). Nevertheless, the
potential power of peers as a catalyst of positive value development should
not be ignored.

The Role of Institutional Philosophies and Professional Practices


We cannot close without questioning how the peer processes described here
were shaped within an institutional context – youth programs. This brings
in another level of analysis at which culture matters. Most youth programs
have a deliberate mission of influencing young people’s values, but they dif-
fer widely, between and within nations, in the approaches they use; many
see their mission as inculcating a fixed set of cultural values (Alvarez, 1994).
It is important to consider how these different approaches are related to
value processes and outcomes, including how well they prepare youth for a
heterogeneous global world. These are applied questions, but also questions
that need the critical eye of theorists and researchers.
The processes of value co-construction that we described at SisterHood
and other American programs were embedded within a philosophy of
“youth-led” programming (Larson, Walker, & Pearce, 2005). This philos-
ophy stresses giving youth agency, choice, and “voice” – both as individu-
als and as a group. In a Western context, it is rooted in cultural beliefs (a
la Montessori, Dewey, Piaget, etc.) that educators should support young
people as the producers of their own development. To be clear, this does
not mean that program leaders abdicate authority. Instead, they lead from
behind. At Sisterhood, Lynn and Janet helped youth formulate their own
rules, which facilitated youth’s formation of mutual trust and other critical
conditions for constructive work. They also primed youth’s value work by
showing films and arranging field trips that challenged youth. Lynn and
Janet wanted them to experience ownership of the discussions that fol-
lowed, so they often stood back. Yet, as described by Bernita, “They take
the lead at the right time, like when the group needs that kind of authority
to get them going or stay on track or topic.” By leading from behind, these
and other leaders helped create conditions for – and keep youth engaged
in – the processes of active listening, analysis, and enactment.
A youth-led philosophy is not unique to Western cultures or nations. It
can be found in youth programs across the world, and is acknowledged by
the United Nations (Alvarez, 1994; Lansdown, 2001). One prominent exam-
ple is peace education programs, which have a youth-led philosophy cou-
pled with a focus on the type of value work we have described (Ardizzone,
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 181

2002). These have often been developed locally in response to conflicts


between groups (e.g., in Israel/Palestine, Latin America, Sierre Leone, and
South Africa), with the goal of cultivating mutual understanding among
youth. Like at SisterHood, the adult advisors of these programs support
honest and open communication between youth. Youth work together to
share personal experiences, raise difficult value issues (e.g., injustice and
oppression), and analyze assumptions and fears (Norman, 2009).
However, a youth-led program philosophy is hardly universal. Many
programs across nations are adult-structured and adult-led (Alvarez, 1994).
We are aware of no global survey of youth programs, but it is likely that
this philosophy is more frequent in cultural contexts where the norms
for youth–educator relationships emphasize interpersonal hierarchy and
respect for elders (Saraswathi, Mistry, & Dutta, 2011; Serpell & Hatano,
1997). Different processes of peer value work can be expected under this
philosophy.
Within our study of American programs, there was one program, “Faith
in Motion,” that provides an illustration of the peer processes under a more
adult-led approach. The leaders were deliberate in inculcating prosocial,
evangelical Christian values. They often led activities from the front of the
room, and peer dynamics among the mixed-race youth were directed in
ways that reinforced adult-prescribed values, religious submission, and col-
lective harmony. For example, rather than encouraging youth to analyze
racial prejudice, they told youth that they were “all equal under God” and
that the ethnic/racial differences between them did not matter. Activities
were structured to encourage cooperation among all, and from our vantage
point, appeared to be quite successful in cultivating positive peer interac-
tions and prosocial values.
Yet adult-led philosophies are typically justified as providing youth a
secure grounding in an existing value system. It is important to ask whether
(and how) this approach can be formulated to help young people learn to
adapt on their own as they encounter new and diverse value systems. We
argue that peer processes that are youth-led (while being adult-guided) may
be better suited to the cross-paradigm value work required to understand,
critique, and develop moral sensibilities for this diversity.
The options, of course, are never so simple as one approach versus
another. There are many permutations to program philosophy, and many
possible adaptations to differing cultural contexts, groups of youth, and
goals. Johnson et al. (2007) describe a rapidly growing environmental youth
activism program in China that combines traditional Chinese Buddhist
and Taoist notions of oneness and selflessness, with an emphasis on social
182 Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala

justice and an operational philosophy that is more democratic and youth-


led than the traditional Chinese leadership style. Of course, programs may
also differ in the importance they give to different value priorities (e.g., to
self, community, and deity).
Further inquiry is needed on how these and other variations in institu-
tional approaches shape peer processes of value development. Piaget’s opti-
mism that peer interactions inevitably lead to the development of prosocial
values is unwarranted. There is strong consistent evidence that, even within
organized programs, certain groups of adolescent peers teach each other
antisocial rather than prosocial behavior (Dodge et al., 2006; Stattin, Kerr,
Mahoney, Persson, & Magnusson, 2005). Evidence also suggests that well-
meaning programs aimed at bridging large divides between youth from hos-
tile groups (such as between Israeli and Palestinian youth) can fail to do so
(Hammack, 2006). Research can help identify practices that are effective in
facilitating constructive peer value work with different groups of youth and
under a range of different program and cultural conditions. There is a wide
world of variations in positive peer developmental processes to be explored.

Acknowledgments
We would like to give special thanks to the youth and program staff who shared
their experiences with us, especially those in SisterHood. We are also indebted
to Kevin Thomas, Andrew Tonachel, and many others. Finally, we thank the
William T. Grant Foundation for their generous funding of this research.

Notes

1. We recognize that the meaning of terms like positive, prosocial, and even develop-
ment can vary across (and even within) cultures (Jensen, 2011), but we hope our text
adequately reflects this possibility without our taking pains to make it a major focus.
2. All names of programs, youth, and leaders are pseudonyms.
3. In each of the 11 programs, we followed a sample of 8–12 youth (total 108) over two
to nine months of program activity (a total of 712 interviews). We also conducted
site observations and interviews with program leaders. The majority of the programs
were urban. Two-thirds of the youth were from non-European ethnic groups, and
approximately a quarter were from immigrant families (see Larson & Angus, 2011).
4. This search for simple causes, Brown et al. (2008) suggest, is because the statistical
techniques available to quantitative researchers constrain them from testing more
complex bilateral relationships.
5. These illustrations, of course, do not address the unanswered question of how fre-
quent different co-constructive processes are across nations or in peer interactions
within or outside of adult-structured institutions.
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 183

6. It is also worth noting that the peer group has a less prominent place in the lives of
Asian than North American youth. Less time is spent with peers (Larson & Verma,
1999) and they are found to be less dependent on peers for self-validation (Chen
et al., 2009). Thus, they may be less motivated to turn to peers for value work.

References

Allen, K., & Antonishak, J. (2008). Adolescent peer influence: Beyond the dark side. In
M. J. Prinstein & K. A. Dodge (Eds.), Understanding peer influence in children and
adolescents (pp. 141–160). New York: Guilford.
Alvarez, B. (1994). Assessing youth programs: An international perspective. Comparative
Education Review, 38, 253–266.
Ardizzone, L. (2002). Towards global understanding: The transformative role of peace
education. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 4, 16–25.
Baumeister, R., Vohs, J., DeWall, C., & Zhang, L. (2007). How emotion shapes behavior:
Feedback, anticipation, and reflection, rather than direct causation. Personality and
Social Psychology Review, 11, 167–203.
Berry, J. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. International Journal of
Applied Psychology, 46, 5–34.
Brown, B. B. (2004). Adolescents’ relationships with peers. In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg
(Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psychology (2nd ed.) (pp. 363–394). Hoboken, NJ:
Wiley.
Brown, B. B., Bakken, J., Ameringer, S., & Mahon, S. (2008). A comprehensive concep-
tualization of the peer influence process in adolescence. In M. J. Prinstein & K. A.
Dodge (Eds.), Understanding peer influence in children and adolescents (pp. 17–44).
New York: Guilford.
Chandler, M. J., Lalonde, C. E., Sokol, B. W., & Hallett, D. (2003). Personal persistence,
identity development, and suicide. In W. F. Overton (Ed.), Monographs of the
Society for Research in Child Development, Serial no. 273, 68 (2).
Chao, R. K., & Otsuki-Clutter, M. (2011). Racial and ethnic differences: Sociocultural
and contextual explanations. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21, 47–60.
Chen, X. (2011). Culture, peer relationships, and human development. In L. A. Jensen
(Ed.), Bridging cultural and developmental approaches to psychology: New syntheses
in theory, research, and policy (pp. 92–112). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chen, X., Chung, J., & Hsiao, C. (2009). Peer interactions and relationships from a cross-
cultural perspective. In K. H. Rubin, W. Bukowski, & B. Laursen (Eds.), Handbook
of peer interactions, relationships, and groups (pp. 432–451). New York: Guilford.
Dawes, N. P., & Larson, R. W. (2011). How youth get engaged: Grounded-theory research
on motivational development in organized youth programs. Developmental
Psychology, 47(1), 259–269.
Deutsch, N. (2007). From island to archipelago: Narratives of relatedness in an urban
youth organization. In R. Josselson, A. Lieblich, & D. P. McAdams (Eds.), The
meeting of others: Narrative studies of relationships. Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Dodge, K., Dishion, T., & Landsford, J. (Eds.). (2006). Deviant peer influences in pro-
grams for youth: Problems and solutions. New York: Guilford.
184 Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala

Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., & Pachan, M. (2010). A meta-analysis of after-school pro-
grams that seek to promote personal and social skills in children and adolescents.
American Journal of Community Psychology, 45, 294–309.
Eccles, J. S., & Gootman, J. A. (Eds.). (2002). Community programs to promote youth
development: Committee on community-level programs for youth. Washington, DC:
National Academy Press.
Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R., & Spinrad, T. (2006). Prosocial development. In W. Damon &
R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology (6th ed.) (Vol. 3, pp. 646–718).
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons.
Fischer, K. W., & Bidell, T. R. (2006). Dynamic development of action and thought. In
W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology (6th ed.) (Vol. 3,
pp. 313–399). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Freeman, S. G. (2009, August 22). Young Sikhs find a way to express faith with a mix of
tradition and modernity. New York Times, A15.
Frey, L., & Sunwolf (2005). The symbolic-interpretive perspective of group life. In M. S.
Poole & A. B. Hollingshead (Eds.), Theories of small groups: Interdisciplinary per-
spectives (pp. 185–239). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Friedman, T. L. (2000). The Lexus and the olive tree: Understanding globalization. New
York : Anchor.
Gaertner, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2000). Reducing intergroup bias: The common ingroup
identity model. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
Giddens, A. (2000). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Gilmore, D. D. (1990). Manhood in the making: Cultural concepts of masculinity. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Gonzales, N. A., & Cauce, A. M. (1995). Ethnic identity and multicultural competence:
Dilemmas and challenges for minority youth. In W. Hawley & A. Jackson (Eds.),
Toward a common destiny: Improving race and ethnic relations in America (pp. 131–
162). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Habermas, T. (Ed.). (2011). The development of autobiographical reasoning in adoles-
cence and beyond. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 131, 1–17.
Haedicke, S., & Nellhaus, T. (Eds.). (2001). Performing democracy: International per-
spectives on urban community-based performance. Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press.
Halverson, E. (2009). Artistic production processes as venues for positive youth devel-
opment. Revista Interuniversitaria de Formacion del Profesorado (Interuniversity
Journal of Teacher Education), 23(3), 181–202.
Hammack, P. L. (2006). Identity, conflict and coexistence: Life stories of Israeli and
Palestinian adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Research, 21, 323–369.
Hansen, D., Larson, R., & Dworkin, J. (2003).What adolescents learn in organized youth
activities: A survey of self-reported developmental experiences. Journal of Research
on Adolescence, 13, 25–56.
Hinsz, V., Tindale, R., & Vollrath, D. (1997). The emerging conceptualization of groups
as information processors. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 43–64.
Hollingshead, A. B., Wittenbaum, G., Paulus, P., Hirokawa, R., Ancona, D., Peterson,
R., … Yoon, K. (2005). A look at groups from the functional perspective. In M. S.
Poole & A. B. Hollingshead (Eds.), Theories of small groups: Interdisciplinary per-
spectives (pp. 21–62). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 185

Hosang, D. (2008). Beyond policy: Ideology, race and the reimagining of youth. In S.
Pedro, J. Ginwright, & N. Cammarota (Eds.), Beyond resistance! Youth activism and
community change: New democratic possibilities for practice and policy for America’s
youth (pp. 3–20). London: Routledge.
Huntington, S. P. (2004). Who are we? The challenges to America’s national identity. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Jensen, L. A. (2008). Through two lenses: A cultural-developmental approach to moral
psychology. Developmental Review, 28, 289–315.
  (2011). The cultural-developmental theory of moral psychology: A new synthesis. In
L. A. Jensen (Ed.), Bridging cultural and developmental psychology: New syntheses in
theory, research and policy (pp. 3–25). New York: Oxford University Press.
Jensen, L. A., Arnett, J. J., & McKenzie, J. (2011). Globalization and cultural identity
developments in adolescence and emerging adulthood. In S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx,
& V. L. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research (pp. 285–301).
New York: Springer Publishing Company.
Johnson, L. R., Johnson-Pynn, J. S., & Pynn, T. M. (2007). Youth civic engagement in
China: Results from a program promoting environmental activism. Journal of
Adolescent Research, 22, 355–386.
Killen, M., Lee-Kim, J., McGlothlin, H., & Stangor, C. (2002). How children and adoles-
cents evaluate gender and racial exclusion. Monographs of the Society for Research
in Child Development, 67, 120–129.
Kirshner, B. (2009). “Power in numbers”: Youth organizing as a context for exploring
civic identity. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 19, 414–440.
Kuhn, D. (2009). Adolescent thinking. In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook
of adolescent psychology (3rd ed.) (Vol. 1, pp. 152–186). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Lansdown, G. (2001). Promoting children’s participation in democratic decision-making.
Florence, Italy: Innocenti Research Center, UNICEF.
Larson, R. W. (2000). Toward a psychology of positive youth development. American
Psychologist, 55, 170–183.
  (2007). From “I” to “We”: Development of the capacity for teamwork in youth pro-
grams. In R. Silbereisen & R. Lerner (Eds.), Approaches to positive youth develop-
ment (pp. 277–292). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Larson, R. W. (2011), Positive development in a disorderly world. Journal of Research on
Adolescence, 21, 317–334.
Larson, R. W., & Angus, R. M. (2011). Adolescents’ development of skills for agency in
youth programs: Learning to think strategically. Child Development, 82, 277–294.
Larson, R., Hansen, D., & Moneta, G. (2006). Differing profiles of developmental experi-
ences across types of organized youth activities. Developmental Psychology, 42 (5),
849–863.
Larson, R., Jarrett, R., Hansen, D., Pearce, N., Sullivan, P., Walker, K. … Wood, D. (2004).
Organized youth activities as contexts of positive development. In P. Linley & S.
Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in practice (pp. 540–560). New York: Wiley.
Larson, R. W., & Verma, S. (1999). How children and adolescents around the world spend time:
Work, play, and developmental opportunities. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 701–736.
Larson, R. W., Walker, K., & Pearce, N. (2005). Youth-driven and adult-driven youth
development programs: Contrasting models of youth-adult relationships. Journal
of Community Psychology, 33, 57–74.
186 Larson, Jensen, Kang, Griffith, and Rompala

Laursen, B., & Hartup, W. H. (2002). The origins of reciprocity and social exchange in
friendships. New Directions in child and adolescent development: Social exchange in
development, 95, 27–40.
Magen, R. H., & Mangiardi, E. (2005). Groups and individual change. In S. Wheelan
(Ed.), Handbook of group research and practice (pp. 351–361). Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Mahoney, J. L., Vandell, D. L., Simpkins, S., & Zarrett, N. (2009). Adolescent out-of-
school activities. In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent
psychology (3rd ed.) (Vol. 2, pp. 228–267). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (2003). Models of agency: Sociocultural diversity in the
construction of action. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 49, 1–57.
Mitchell, T. (Ed.). (2001). Global noise: Rap and hip-hop outside the USA. Middletown,
CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Newman, B., & Newman, P. (2001). Group identity and alienation: Giving the we it’s
due. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 30, 515–538.
Norman, J. M. (2009). Creative activism: Youth media in Palestine. Middle East Journal
of Culture and Communication, 2, 252–274.
Patel, E. (2007). Acts of faith: The story of an American Muslim, the struggle for the soul of
a generation. Boston: Beacon Press.
Pettigrew, T. (1998). Intergroup contact theory. American Review of Psychology, 49,
65–85.
Phinney, J. S., & Kohatsu, E. L. (1997). Ethnic and racial identity development and men-
tal health. In J. Schulenberg, J. Moggs, & K. Hurrelman (Eds.), Health risks and
developmental transitions in adolescence (pp. 420–443). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Piaget, J. (1965). The moral judgment of the child (T. A. Brown & C. E. Kaegi, Trans.) Palo
Alto, CA: Annual Reviews.
Quintana, S. M. (1998). Children’s developmental understanding of ethnicity and race.
Applied and Preventive Psychology, 7, 27–45.
Rogoff, B. (1998). Cognition as a collaborative process. In W. Damon, D. Kuhn, &
R. Siegler (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology (5th ed.) (Vol. 2, pp. 679–744). New
York: Wiley.
Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston: Beacon
Press.
Roth, J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2003). Youth development programs: Risk, prevention and
policy. Journal of Adolescent Health, 32, 170–182.
Saraswathi, T. S., Mistry, J., & Dutta, R. (2011). Reconceptualizing lifespan development
through a Hindu perspective. In L. A. Jensen (Ed.), Bridging cultural and develop-
mental approaches to psychology: New syntheses in theory, research, and policy (pp.
276–302). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schlegal, A. (2011). Adolescent ties to adult communities: The intersection of culture and
development. In L. A. Jensen (Ed.), Bridging cultural and developmental approaches
to psychology: New syntheses in theory, research, and policy (pp. 138–160). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Selman, R. L. (2003). The promotion of social awareness: Powerful lessons from the part-
nership of developmental theory and classroom practice. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation.
Peer Groups and Positive Value Development 187

Serpell, R., & Hatano, G. (1997). Education, schooling, and literacy. In J. W. Berry, P. R.
Dasen, & T. S. Saraswathi (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology: Basic pro-
cesses and human development (2nd ed.) (pp. 339–376). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Stattin, H., Kerr, M., Mahoney, J., Persson, A., & Magnusson, D. (2005). Explaining why
a leisure context is bad for some girls and not for others. In J. Mahoney, R. Larson,
& J. Eccles (Eds.), Organized activities as contexts of development (pp. 211–234).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Templeton, J., & Eccles, J. (2008). Spirituality, “Expanding circle morality,” and positive
youth development. In R. M. Lerner, R. W. Roeser, & E. Phelps (Eds.), Positive
youth development and spirituality: From theory to research (pp. 197–209). West
Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press.
Tienda, M., & Wilson, W. (2002). Youth in cities: A cross-national perspective. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Tynes, B. (2007). Internet safety gone wild? Sacrificing the educational and psycho-
social benefits of online social environments. Journal of Adolescent Research, 22,
575–584.
Watkins, N., Larson, R., & Sullivan, P. (2007). Learning to bridge difference: Community
youth programs as contexts for developing multicultural competencies. American
Behavioral Scientist, 51, 380–402.
Wheelan, S. A., Davidson, B., & Tilin, F. (2003). Group development across time: Reality
or illusion? Small Group Research, 34, 223–245.
Youniss, J. (2009). When morality meets politics in development. Journal of Moral
Education, 38, 129–144.
8 Civic Development in Relational Perspective

Kenneth H. Rubin, Tina Malti, and Kristina McDonald

Abstract
Civic competence has been posited as an important outcome of productive
adolescent development. This chapter introduces a relational model of civic
competence, including factors that may lead some individuals onto path-
ways to the development of civically competent behavior. More specifically,
the model describes the significance of relationship quality with parents,
peers, and friends as well as socially competent (or incompetent) behaviors
in the development of civic competence. The model suggests social relation-
ships as a significant antecedent to civic competence and as a buffer for risks
associated with disengagement. Because this model focuses on relationship
quality, it is evident that it is embedded in cultural practices and values.
Inevitably, the role of relationships and social competence on civic compe-
tence outcomes also varies as a function of who the child, the parents, and
the friends are. Finally, we propose that adolescents’ positive experiences
with friends and parents may encourage the development of civic compe-
tence even for individuals who were initially aggressive or anxiously with-
drawn as children.

Civic competence, reflecting the acquisition of cognitions and behaviors


that allow citizens to discuss and collaborate to promote interests within
a framework of democratic principles (Youniss et al., 2002), has been pos-
ited as a significant outcome of productive adolescent development. In an
increasingly diversified world, the acquisition of social responsibility, tol-
erance, and civic engagement represents a significant step in the securing
of social integration and democratic values (Larson, Brown, & Mortimer,
2002). Part of the “decentering process” during the transition from ado-
lescence to young adulthood is learning to understand how the self fits

188
Civic Development in Relational Perspective 189

into and can make constructive contributions to the community-at-large


(Schulenberg, Sameroff, & Ciccchetti, 2004).
The primary purpose of this chapter is to present a conceptual model
that describes factors that may lead some individuals onto pathways to the
development of civically competent behavior. Surprisingly, there have been
few longitudinal studies of the relational and developmental precursors of
civic competence in emerging adulthood. The extant longitudinal research
has focused primarily on the sorts of early activity involvement that may
predict subsequent civic engagement (e.g., Gardner, Roth, & Brooks-Gunn,
2008; Hart, Donnelly, Youniss, & Atkins, 2007). Few researchers have
focused on the potential significance of interpersonal relationships (e.g.,
parent–child relationships, friendships, peer acceptance/exclusion/victim-
ization), and both socially skilled (e.g., prosocial behavior, leadership), and
unskilled behaviors (e.g., aggression, social withdrawal). In one exception,
Obradović and Masten (2007) recently reported that variability in adoles-
cent social competence (as indicated by the extent to which the adoles-
cent seemed to have a positive and active social life, was socially accepted,
and had qualitatively rich friendships) predicted civic engagement in early
adulthood, above and beyond the effects of earlier activity involvement.
However, Obradović and Masten did not compare behavioral and relational
indicators of social competence in the prediction of later civic competence.
Our present work addresses this research question; we compared the rela-
tive influences of social competence and indicators of relationship quality
with parents and friends in the prediction of later civic engagement.
In the present chapter, we present a model that suggests that civic compe-
tence may be explained, in part, by child and adolescent social competence
(or incompetence) and the quality of relationships with parents, peers, and
friends. The conceptual model examines both direct and indirect associa-
tions of competence and parent and peer relationship to later civic engage-
ment. Because this model focuses on relationship quality, it is clear that it
is embedded in cultural practices and values. We also suggest that adoles-
cent relationships may moderate the influences of behavioral competence
on later civic competence. We propose that positive experiences with friends
and parents in adolescence may encourage civic engagement even for indi-
viduals who were initially aggressive or anxiously withdrawn as children.
Clearly, civic competence is a significant outcome in the lives of young
adults. And yet, there has not been a longitudinal study in which research-
ers have examined the independent contributions of behavioral compe-
tence and how relationships with parents and peers predict the prevalence,
190 Rubin, Malti, and McDonald

Development

Parent–Child Outcome
Relationship

Social Behavior
Social
Competence

Withdrawal Civic
Competence

Aggression

Peer
Relationship

Figure 8.1.  A relational model of civic competence.

breadth, and quality of civic competence in early adulthood. We have initi-


ated such a study and describe some initial findings in this chapter. In our
investigation, we examine these associations longitudinally by following a
sample of individuals through middle school and high school. The concep-
tual model guiding this project is found in Figure 8.1 and is discussed, in
detail, below.

A Relational Model of Civic Competence


Young people who successfully transition into adulthood are those who
demonstrate social responsibility and who are capable of practicing civic
engagement (Flanagan & Gallay, 1995; Havighurst, 1972). Recently, scholars
have raised the question as to whether adolescents’ interpersonal experiences
provide them with the social resources and competencies required to suc-
ceed and develop civic competence (Larson, Wilson, Brown, Furstenberg,
& Verma, 2002). This question underpins the conceptual model presented
herein and initial findings of a study we describe in this chapter.
Civic Development in Relational Perspective 191

Social-Constructivist Models of Moral Development


in Cultural Context
Social-constructivist models of moral and civic development have empha-
sized the role of culture and social interactions in the genesis of inter-
individual differences in moral and civic development, such as social
responsibility and civic engagement. The culture in which a child grows
up has specific social expectations and norms for social interactions within
relationships (Chen, 2011; Rubin, Oh, Menzer, & Ellison, 2011). Children
and adolescents also construct meaning for interpersonal moral situations
through their experiences in close relationships (Keller, 2004).
For example, cross-cultural research indicates that people in collectivist
cultures find that meeting interpersonal and social responsibilities to fam-
ily and friends is personally satisfying. In contrast, people in individualistic
cultures treat such responsibilities as obligations (see Malti & Keller, 2010).
Benevolence and concern for the well-being of other members of the com-
munity are central moral values in the Confucian tradition (Bond, 1996).
These values influence social interactions, and social interactions serve
as mediators of how cultural values influence children’s and adolescents’
moral and civic development. Likewise, it has been argued that societal eth-
ics regarding social responsibility play a role in how much adolescents are
bound to their larger communities. For example, research indicates that
adolescents in stable democratic versus declining socialist societies in cen-
tral Eastern Europe differ in their values and political theories (Flanagan,
2000). From a constructivist perspective then, culturally guided values and
social interaction processes affect the adolescent’s construction of moral
norms involving civic responsibility (Malti & Keller, 2010; see Lerner,
2004). Research also indicates that participation in civic activities promotes
a moral-civic identity (Yates & Youniss, 1996).

Psychosocial Theory
Psychosocial theorists (Erikson, 1968) have long stressed the significance
of relational antecedents for the development of civic competence. It has
been posited that, particularly in adolescence and emerging adulthood,
social relationships serve as the experiential backgrounds for the growth
of civic competence. Thus, for example, the emergence of personal iden-
tity and related motivational orientations toward social justice and care are
thought to develop, in part, as a function of interpersonal experiences in
close, supportive social relationships. Psychosocial theory also argues that
the processes, skills, knowledge, and social support that make competence
possible in the major tasks of one developmental period serve to build the
192 Rubin, Malti, and McDonald

foundation for adaptation in subsequent periods of development (Erikson,


1968).
Relatedly, from the perspective of developmental science, competence in
salient domains of one developmental period may predict subsequent com-
petence in newly emerging domains, thereby reflecting heterotypic con-
tinuity (Roisman, Masten, Coatsworth, & Tellegen, 2004). Initial support
for these psychosocially derived contentions derives from research demon-
strating that resilience and well-being in emerging adulthood is a function
of previous success across developmental tasks in the domains of citizen-
ship, work, and romantic involvement (Schulenberg et al., 2004).

Relationship Theories
Perhaps of equal or greater relevance are the premises drawn from social
relationship theories. These theories make significant contributions to
understanding the development, over the long term, of civic competence
and engagement. Attachment theorists (Bowlby, 1969), for example, have
suggested that the development of secure relationships with primary care-
givers enable (and predict) the development, not only of social competence
and a positive sense of self, but also of qualitatively rich extra-familial rela-
tionships. It has been suggested that the development of an “internal work-
ing model” (IWM), which allows for the internalization of security and
trust within familial and extra-familial relationships (Mikulincer & Shaver,
2005), may provide the basis for a willingness to act prosocially and gener-
ously on the behalf of others (Hastings, Utendale, & Sullivan, 2007). In sum,
children’s relationships and social experiences with others may well influ-
ence, both directly and indirectly, the development of civic competence in
adolescence and early adulthood. The processes by which this may occur
are described in the section on Hinde’s perspective.

Hinde’s Perspective
We frame our research within the interpersonal, theoretical framework offered
by Hinde (e.g., 1979). Hinde has suggested that social development can best
be understood by distinguishing among the contributing characteristics of (1)
the individual, (2) the interactions between individuals, and (3) the relation-
ships formed and maintained by individuals, in part as a function of their indi-
vidual characteristics and the nature of their social interactions. Individuals
bring to social exchanges fairly stable orientations and a repertoire of skills
for perspective taking and thinking about the self in relation to others. These
social cognitions about such matters as societal issues and solving interper-
sonal dilemmas are believed to predict the ways in which individuals interact
Civic Development in Relational Perspective 193

in the company of others. Importantly, individuals’ interactions with others


vary in form and function in response to fluctuations in the parameters of the
social situation, such as the partner’s characteristics, overtures, and responses.
Interactions can be simply categorized as involving movements toward (e.g.,
prosocial, friendly initiations and responses), against (e.g., agonistic initiations
and responses), or away (e.g., withdrawal) from others (Rubin, Bukowski, &
Parker, 2006). Finally, relationships involve a succession of interactions between
two individuals known to each other. The nature and course of each interac-
tion is influenced by the history of past interactions between the individuals as
well as by their expectations for interactions in the future.
Hinde’s (1979) conceptual orientation may allow for the simultaneous
investigation of individual, interactional, and relational antecedents of civic
competence. Relational antecedents have largely been ignored in the study of
civic competence. Few, if any, researchers have examined individual differences
in the early adolescent precursors of civic competence. Thus, our research is
among the first longitudinal examinations to simultaneously examine the
individual, interactional, and relational predictors of civic competence. In this
chapter, we examine individual and relationship factors that may lay the basis
for and help predict the subsequent development of civic competence.

Parent–child Relationships and the Development


of Civic Competence
The Secure Attachment Relationship.  A basic assumption of attach-
ment theory is that the child’s relationships with primary caregivers pro-
vide models for all relationships to follow, including friend and romantic
relationships (Furman & Collins, 2009). Secure relationships with parents
during childhood and early adolescence is associated with increased empa-
thy and emotion regulation skills, which shape interactions and relation-
ships with others in adolescence and adulthood (Furman & Collins, 2009).
From this perspective, a foundation of emotional and behavioral interde-
pendence in early life lays the basis for the development of social compe-
tence, self-assuredness, and the development of supportive extra-familial
relationships.
The putative, proximal causes of the development of a secure attachment
relationship are the expressions of parental support, responsivity, warmth, and
sensitivity. The sensitive and responsive parent recognizes the child’s emo-
tional signals, considers the child’s perspective, and responds promptly and
appropriately to the child’s needs. In turn, the child develops a belief system
that incorporates the parent as someone who can be relied on for protection,
nurturance, comfort, and security; a sense of trust in relationships results
194 Rubin, Malti, and McDonald

from the secure child–parent bond. Furthermore, the child forms a belief that
the self is competent and worthy of positive responses from others.
The process by which a secure attachment relationship is thought to
result in the development of social competence and positive relationships
with peers may be described briefly as follows. The internal working model
(IWM) of the securely attached young child allows him or her to feel secure,
confident, and self-assured when introduced to novel settings; this sense of
felt security fosters the child’s active exploration of the social environment
(Sroufe, 1983). In turn, exploration of the social milieu leads to peer inter-
action and play. Peer interactions and play allow children to experience the
interpersonal exchange of ideas, perspectives, roles, and actions. From such
social interchanges, children develop social competence, mature ways of
thinking about the social world, and positive peer relationships (see Rubin
et al., 2006a for a review).
Research also indicates that securely attached elementary and middle
schoolers are more socially competent, are better able to make and keep
friends and to experience qualitatively rich and supportive friendships (e.g.,
Booth-LaForce, Rubin, Rose-Krasnor, & Burgess, 2004). With this in mind,
secure attachment, perhaps through facilitating a “mutual responsive ori-
entation,” may enhance the demonstration of prosocial acts and the inter-
nalization of parental values (Rose-Krasnor & Denham, 2009). It may well
be that young adolescents who have experienced positive, supportive, and
secure relationships with parents and peers would be inclined to consider
the well-being of others and participate in activities that would enable oth-
ers in their social communities to benefit from their own good deeds.
Relatedly, developmental models of social responsibility and morality
propose that a sense of social responsibility is rooted in the formation of
close relationships to significant others, such as parents (Smetana, 1997).
As noted above, supportive, secure parent–child relationships reinforce the
demonstration of supportive, prosocial behaviors in extra-familial relation-
ships and with others in general (Kochanska & Murray, 2000). This process
may promote later trust in one’s own moral judgments and foster principled
moral reasoning (Arsenio & Gold, 2006), compassion, altruism, tolerance,
and empathy (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2005).

Social Competence, Social Relationships, and the Development of


Civic Competence
Social competence has been defined as the ability to achieve personal
goals in social interaction while simultaneously maintaining positive rela-
tionships with others over time and across settings (Rose-Krasnor, 1997).
Civic Development in Relational Perspective 195

This definition includes both positive, prosocial, and socially acceptable


behavior, but also the absence of unfriendly and agonistic behavior (for a
review, see Rubin et al., 2006a). Civic competence frequently appears to be
an extension of such social competencies as empathy, prosocial behavior,
the ability to take alternate perspectives, solve interpersonal problems, and
commitment to moral norms, the latter frequently leading to civic engage-
ment and courage (Flanagan & Faison, 2001).
From the review of the extant literature offered above, it seems clear that
the quality of the parent–child relationship is associated with, and predic-
tive of the ways in which children and adolescents behave in their social
worlds and the prevalence and quality of their close, dyadic relationships
(e.g., friendship). Insofar as child and adolescent social behavior is con-
cerned, we have noted that individuals with secure parent–child attachment
relationships, whose parents are supportive and appropriately controlling,
are likely to demonstrate the ability to: 1) take the perspectives of others,
2) think confidently and positively about the self, 3) be motivated to fol-
low rules of fairness and justice, and 4) resolve interpersonal conflicts con-
structively. These competencies, when “translated” into the expression of
social behavior, allow the expression of sociable, prosocial behaviors that
promote co-constructive peer interaction (Malti & Noam, 2009). In turn,
this constellation of competencies and behaviors are posited to contribute
to adaptive development and civic competence (e.g., Keller, 2004; Malti,
Gummerum, Keller, & Buchmann, 2009).
Secure, competent adolescents are accepted by the peer group and are
viewed positively as prospective friendship partners (Rubin et al., 2006a).
Furthermore, their friendships tend to be with others much like them
(Rubin, Lynch, Coplan, Rose-Krasnor, & Booth, 1994) and the quality of
their friendships tend to be supportive, appropriately intimate, constructive
and helpful, and trusting. The friendships of socially competent children
and adolescents become increasingly conceptualized in terms of com-
mitment and reciprocity. From learning about the provisions of friend-
ship (e.g., trust, support, helpfulness, partnership), and from experiencing
close affective ties to others outside the family circle, socially competent
children, through the mutually reciprocal experience of reliable alliances
and support, develop the motivation to act fairly and prosocially in one’s
community (Keller & Edelstein, 1993). This reflects Aristotle’s notion that
“the polis is a network of friends bound together by a mutual pursuit of a
common good” (Flanagan & Faison, 2001, p. 7). Indeed, recent research
indicates that friendship quality may positively affect moral reasoning and
moral motivations, a correlate of civic competence (Malti & Buchmann,
196 Rubin, Malti, and McDonald

2010; McDonald, Malti, Killen, & Rubin, personal correspondence), sup-


porting our hypothesis that social competence and the experience of rich,
supportive friendships contribute to the development of later civic compe-
tence. Also, high quality friendships may, in part, make up for poor qual-
ity relationships with parents: high quality friendships may buffer children
who have less secure or supportive relationships with parents (e.g., Rubin
et al., 2004).
Although researchers have reported relations between attachment,
morality, and behaviors in adolescence and young adulthood (Bradford,
Vaughn, & Barber, 2008; van Ijzendoorn, 1997), there have been few, if any,
longitudinal studies of the relations between the quality of close relation-
ships with parents and peers, social competence, and civic competence.
Taken together, our perspective suggests that social competence may medi-
ate the relation between earlier parent–child relations and later civic engage-
ment. Alternatively, social competence and civic engagement may only be
associated because quality parent–child relationships and friendships are a
common precursor for both. Moreover, extant studies have not examined
how quality relationships may interact with social competence to predict
civic competence. In our model, which examines social competence and
relationships as separate predictors of competence, we can examine these
different hypotheses.
Thus, in our research, we have begun to address some of these questions,
including: (1) Does the quality of relationships with parents and friends in
late childhood/early adolescence predict civic competence in later adoles-
cence? (2) Does late childhood/early adolescent social competence predict
civic competence in later adolescence? (3) Is this latter association mod-
erated, in part, by the quality of relationships that young adolescents have
with friends? In the present chapter we examine two of these questions:
how behavioral competence (as indexed by prosocial behavior) and quality
relationships with parents and friends directly and indirectly predict civic
competence in late adolescence.

Preliminary Results on Civic Development and


Social Relationships
Our data derives from an ongoing longitudinal study, in which social rela-
tionships (i.e., friendships and parent–child relationships) and social com-
petencies were examined longitudinally. Four cohorts of young adolescents
participated in the study. The sample was followed from the first year of
middle school (6th grade; Time 1) to the final year of middle school (8th
Civic Development in Relational Perspective 197

grade; Time 2). Additionally, data from two cohorts of 12th graders was
included in the present analysis (N = 167; Time 3). The sample attended
middle schools in middle- to upper-middle class neighborhoods in the sub-
urbs of Washington, DC. Approximately, 62 percent of adolescents’ moth-
ers and 65.3 percent of their fathers had a university degree.
A larger sample of 1,461 6th graders participated in grade-wide socio-
metric and behavioral nomination assessments. Participants completed
surveys in group testing sessions (at lunch or in gym). Then a subsample
of targeted participants was invited to complete additional questionnaires
during a laboratory visit in the spring of their 6th grade year. For 8th and
12th grade assessments, participants completed questionnaires on a com-
puter, via an online survey tool, or by paper and pencil questionnaires sent
home.
Civic competence was measured in 12th grade (Time 3) by civic activity
engagement and meaningfulness of civic engagement. Participants com-
pleted The Leisure Activities Questionnaire (LAQ; based on Passmore &
French, 2001), which in part assesses the nature, frequency, and enjoyment
of community service activities, as indexes of civic activity engagement.
Adolescents were asked to report their most frequent community service
activities, indicate the frequency of participation, and rate their enjoyment
of the activity. Participants were asked to provide up to three activities,
which were coded into two categories: civic and non-civic. Activities were
judged as civic if they were community, service-oriented or politically-ori-
ented (e.g., canned food drive, soup kitchen, volunteering at a hospital). A
sum score of civic activities was created and used as an indicator of “civic
engagement.”
In addition, for the 12th grade assessments, young adults were asked
to rate how meaningful and important community service activities were
to them. Perceived meaningfulness of community service activities was
assessed by four items (e.g., “How much are community service activities
an important part of who you are?”). A sum score was created (Cronbach’s
α = .90) and labeled “meaningfulness of civic engagement.”
The Network of Relationships Inventory Questionnaire (NRI; Furman
& Buhrmester, 1985) was completed at T1 by participants and assessed
provisions of close relationships with mothers and fathers. The NRI com-
prises 10 conceptually distinct subscales that load onto two factors (e.g.,
Furman, 1996): (1) support (affection, admiration, instrumental aid, com-
panionship, intimacy, nurturance, and reliable alliance) and (2) negativity
(antagonism and conflict). Perceptions of maternal and paternal support
198 Rubin, Malti, and McDonald

were combined, and a mean score for parental support at T1 (M = 4.04,


SD = 0.54; Cronbach’s α = .69) was created.
Additionally, participants completed the Friendship Quality Questionnaire
(FQQ) at T1. The FQQ comprises six subscales (i.e., companionship, valida-
tion and caring, help and guidance, intimate disclosure, lack of conflict and
betrayal, conflict resolution) that together can be combined as an index of
friendship quality (M = 3.94, SD = 0.62; Cronbach’s α = .82).
The Extended Class Play (ECP; e.g., Rubin et al., 2006b) was adminis-
tered at T1 and T2. Adolescents nominated up to three classmates who
would best fit a variety of behavioral descriptors. For this chapter, we focus
on prosocial behavior, comprised of six items that assessed kind, helpful,
and cooperative behaviors (e.g., “helps others,” “polite,” and “trustworthy;”
T1 α = .88; T2 α = .82).
The majority of adolescents in 12th grade were involved in at least one
civic activity regularly (M = 1.98, SD = 0.89), and, on average, participants
attached high value to civic engagement (M = 2.60, SD = 0.96). The correla-
tions between the civic competence variables with the social relationship
and social competence variables are displayed in Table 8.1. As can be seen,
civic engagement in 12th grade was positively associated with prosocial
behavior in 6th and 8th grades. Perceived meaningfulness of civic engage-
ment was positively associated with parent–child relationships and friend-
ship relationships in 6th grade.
To test our relational model of civic competence, we next investigated
the hypothesis that civic engagement and civic valuation in 12th grade were
related to earlier parent–child and friendship relationships and prosocial
behavior. Separate path analyses were completed for civic engagement in
12th grade and the meaningfulness of civic engagement in 12th grade. As
independent variables, we used parental and friendship support in 6th
grade as well as prosocial behavior in both 6th and 8th grade. The analyses
for the present study were conducted using AMOS 6.0 and full maximum
likelihood estimation of missing data. Model fit was evaluated using the
Comparative Fit Index (CFI); CFIs greater than .90 indicate good model
fit. Parameter estimates are given in parentheses and refer to standardized
estimates.
The model of civic engagement provided a good fit to the data, CFI =
.97. Civic engagement was marginally predicted by parental support in
6th grade (.14, p < .10). Additionally, prosocial behavior in 6th grade and
friendship support in 6th grade predicted prosocial behavior in 8th grade
(.78, p < .001; .09, p < .05). However, there was no direct relation between
prosocial behavior and civic engagement.
Civic Development in Relational Perspective 199

Table 8.1  Correlations between Civic Competence Variables with Social


Relationships and Social Competence Variables

Variable Civic Competence

Variable Civic Engagement Meaningfulness of Civic


in 12th grade Engagement in 12th grade
Parent–child relationship 6th grade .14 .20*
Friendship relationship 6th grade .07 .20*
Prosocial behavior 6th grade .15* .07
Prosocial behavior 8th grade .17* .06
Note:  CE = Civic engagement.
*  p < .05.

The model on perceived meaningfulness of civic engagement also pro-


vided a good fit to the data, CFI = .98. Perceived meaningfulness of civic
engagement was predicted by parental support in 6th grade (.22, p < .01)
and marginally by friendship support in 6th grade (.14, p < .10). There was
no direct relation between prosocial behavior and perceived meaningful-
ness of civic engagement. Again, prosocial behavior in 6th grade predicted
prosocial behavior in 8th grade (.78, p < .001; see Figure 8.2).

Summary and Future Directions


The goal of this chapter was to describe a relational model of civic compe-
tence that links social relationships and social competence development to
civic competence outcomes in adolescence and young adulthood. Because
civic competence and social responsibility have been posited as significant
positive outcomes in the lives of adolescents and young adults, we have
argued that longitudinal studies on the social competence and relationship
antecedents of civic competence have great potential to contribute to our
understanding of how early precursors of civic competence develop. In
addition to our conceptual model, we provided some initial findings to test
longitudinal associations between social relationships, prosocial behaviors,
and civic competence outcomes.
Together, the results of our preliminary analyses suggest that civic com-
petence in late adolescence is directly related to earlier parent–child rela-
tionship quality. Although, 12th grade civic engagement was correlated
with prosocial behavior in 6th and 8th grade, the path model did not indi-
cate any significant direct relationships between prosocial behavior and
civic engagement. Perhaps this is because of the direct associations of civic
200 Rubin, Malti, and McDonald

6th grade 8th grade 12th grade

.22**
Parent–child
relationship –.07

Prosocial Prosocial Valuation of civic


behavior behavior engagement
.78*** .01

Friendship .09*
relationship

.04

Figure 8.2.  Path model of perceived meaningfulness of civic engagement, social


­relationships, and social competence (prosocial behavior). Bolded solid lines represent
significant paths. Solid lines represent marginally significant paths at p < .10.
* p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

engagement with parent–child relationship quality in early adolescence.


Together, these preliminary results suggest that civic competence in late
adolescence is predicted by the quality of earlier relationships with parents.
Further, any associations between prosocial behavior and later civic compe-
tence may be explained by their common relationship with quality parent–
child relationships.
We should note that these preliminary analyses were powered at low
levels, and that when a larger longitudinal sample is analyzed, direct rela-
tions between prosocial behavior and civic competence may be significant.
However, it is clear that the direct associations between parent–child rela-
tionships and civic competence are larger in size than those between proso-
cial behavior and civic competence, suggesting at the least, that prosocial
behavior may only be a partial mediator of the link between parent–child
relationships and civic engagement.
Our findings suggest that an interpersonal theoretical framework
(Hinde, 1979) is well suited to understand how civic competence develops
as a function of the nature of social relationships with significant others.
We have emphasized that this interpersonal framework is embedded in the
cultural constraints and opportunities in which relationships are inevitably
immersed (see Rubin et al., 2011). This finding is also in line with research
on the role of family socialization and youth responsibility (Pancer & Pratt,
1999), as well as the role of peers and friendship relationships on civic com-
petence development (Wray-Lake, Syvertsen, & Flanagan, 2010). Taken
Civic Development in Relational Perspective 201

together, the findings reflect the assumption that there is correspondence


between a young person’s civic competence and those of parents and peers
(McLellan & Youniss, 2003).
Our analyses revealed no direct influence of friendship relationship quality
on civic outcomes. It is likely, however, that the association between friendship
quality and civic engagement varies as a function of who the friend is. Thus,
further empirical analyses are needed to control for who the friend is and his/
her behavioral characteristics to disentangle if and how friendship may, in
addition to indirect paths, also directly contribute to civic engagement.
In future analyses, we will also investigate how and whether indicators
of social incompetence (i.e., aggression, anxious withdrawal) are predic-
tive of later civic competence. Aggressive children and adolescents are
largely rejected by their peers (Miller-Johnson, Coie, Maumary-Gremaud,
& Bierman, 2002). However, they may be friends with other aggressive
children and these friendships may contribute to future maladjustment
(Adams, Bukowski, & Bagwell, 2005). The friendships of aggressive chil-
dren differ from those of nonaggressive children. In particular, investigators
have shown that aggressive children are more likely to engage in “deviant”
talk than nonaggressive children, which in turn, reinforces their aggres-
sive and delinquent behavioral patterns (Poulin, Dishion, & Haas, 1999).
Moreover, the friendships of aggressive children have been characterized by
high levels of aggression within the friendship and lower levels of intimacy
(Brendgen, Vitaro, Turgeon, & Poulin, 2002).
Despite these differences in whom they befriend and the nature of their
relationships, there is some evidence suggesting that aggressive children’s
friendships can function protectively, in much the same way as those of
nonaggressive children. For instance, Poulin and colleagues (Poulin et al.,
1999) found that boys who were highly delinquent at age 13–14 and who
had a friendship that was low in friendship quality were those whose delin-
quent behaviors increased over time. A high quality friendship protected
highly delinquent boys from increasing delinquent behavior, regardless
of the degree to which their friends were also delinquent. Thus, examina-
tions of how aggressive behavior and relationships with parents and friends
directly predict and interact in their predictions of later civic competence
(and incompetence) are warranted in future studies.
Additionally, anxious withdrawn children and adolescents are largely
rejected by their peers (e.g., Valdivia, Schneider, Chavez, & Chen, 2005)
and have difficulty forming large numbers of friendships (Pedersen,
Vitaro, Barker, & Borge, 2007). Nevertheless, like aggressive children, they
are known to have friendships with others much like them (Rubin et al.,
202 Rubin, Malti, and McDonald

2006a). Moreover, the friendships of socially withdrawn children have been


characterized by low levels of conversation, fun, helpfulness, and intimacy
(Rubin et al., 2006b). At this time, virtually nothing is known about the
possible roles of anxious withdrawn children’s friendships in the extent to
which they are civically engaged. We also suggest that anxious withdrawal,
in conjunction with indicators of relationship quality, also be investigated
as a predictor of later civic competence.
Future analyses should also test our theoretical hypothesis that rela-
tionships might buffer shy, withdrawn, and aggressive children and young
adolescents and help them to subsequently become civically engaged.
Supportive relationships with parents and friends may buffer the relation
between social withdrawal or aggression and subsequent maladaptive
outcomes and help children and young adolescents at risk for maladapta-
tion overcome these behavioral problems and meaningfully engage in the
community. A compensatory model, in which youth with developmental
problems can overcome these by experiencing supportive and caring rela-
tionships with peers and parents, offers promising ground for interven-
tionists. Future studies are needed to further investigate if and how civic
competence is shaped by the interaction between social relationships and
individual behavioral characteristics.
It is also important to consider our proposed relational model of civic
competence in different cultural contexts in future research. Our initial
investigations of this model are limited to a Western cultural context, and
care should be taken when generalizing to other populations. Further, just as
definitions of social competence may vary cross-culturally (Rose-Krasnor,
1997) the definitions of civic competence or civic engagement may differ
cross-culturally. Culturally sensitive investigations of this topic should first
make an effort to identify those behaviors and attitudes that may define
civic competence within the cultural group being examined.
However, we do expect that many of the hypotheses proposed in the
relational model of civic competence would hold for other cultural groups:
the implications of close relationships, especially with parents, for social
and emotional adjustment may be similar cross-culturally (Khaleque &
Rohner, 2002). In fact, it is likely that the role of close relationships with
parents and friends and the role of social competence in predicting later
civic competence would be similar in most, if not all, Western cultures and
in many Eastern cultures as well. For example, Rohner (1986) has suggested
that parental warmth may have cross-culturally universal significance for
child development. In support of this hypothesis, parental warmth has
been found to be predictive of concurrent and later social, emotional, and
Civic Development in Relational Perspective 203

academic competence in both Western and Eastern cultures (e.g., Khaleque


& Rohner, 2002; see Rubin et al., 2011). Further, although relationships
with caregivers are affected by cultural-specific norms and thus may vary
in the qualities of a typical parent–child relationship, the significance of
the parent–child (or caregiver–child) relationship for later social and emo-
tional competence is undeniable (van IJzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008).
Based on this literature, it is likely that caregiver–child relationships will
have consequences for later civic competence for most cultural groups.
In summary, this chapter has provided a first attempt to develop and
test a relational model of civic competence. This model posits social rela-
tionships as a significant antecedent and a buffer of individual behav-
ioral risk or support of individual social competence, respectively, in
the development of civic competence. Future longitudinal studies are
needed to test and validate the model’s assumption empirically. It has
also become clear that the role of relationships and social competence
development on civic competence outcomes varies as a function of who
the child, the parents, and the friends are. Thus, an analysis of moder-
ating variables is needed to clarify if and how individual characteristics
interact with social relationships and conjointly contribute to civic com-
petence development in adolescence and young adulthood. Likewise,
future analyses may investigate the impact of culture as a broader social
context in which social relationships are embedded and their influence
on later civic competence.

References

Adams, R. E., Bukowski, W. M., & Bagwell, C. L. (2005). Stability of aggression dur-
ing early adolescence as moderated by reciprocated friendship status and friend’s
aggression. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 29, 139–145.
Arsenio, W. F., & Gold, J. (2006). The effects of social injustice and inequality on chil-
dren’s moral judgments and behavior: Towards a theoretical model. Cognitive
Development, 21, 388–400.
Bond, M. H. (Ed.). (1996). The Handbook of Chinese psychology. Hong Kong: Oxford
University Press.
Booth-LaForce, C., Rubin, K. H., Rose-Krasnor, L., & Burgess, K. B. (2004). Attachment
and friendship predictors of psychosocial functioning in middle childhood, and the
mediating roles of social support and self-worth. In K. A. Kerns & R. A. Richardson
(Eds.), Attachment in middle childhood (pp. 161–188). New York: Guilford.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. I. Attachment. New York: Basic Books.
Bradford, K., Vaughn, L. B., & Barber, B. K. (2008). When there is conflict: Interparental
conflict, parent–child conflict, and youth problem behaviors. Journal of Family
Issues, 29, 780–805.
204 Rubin, Malti, and McDonald

Brendgen, M., Vitaro, F., Turgeon, L., & Poulin, F. (2002). Assessing aggressive and
depressed children’s social relations with classmates and friends: A matter of per-
spective. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 30, 609–624.
Chen, X. (2011). Culture, social interaction, and socioemotional functioning: A contex-
tual-developmental perspective. In X. Chen & K. H. Rubin (Eds.), Socioemotional
development in cultural context (pp. 29–52). New York: Guilford.
Dodge, K. A., Coie, J. D., & Lynam, D. (2006). Aggression and antisocial behavior in
youth. In N. Eisenberg, W. Damon, & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child
psychology: Vol. 3, Social, emotional, and personality development (pp. 719–788).
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: youth and crisis. Oxford: Norton & Co.
Flanagan, C. A. (2000). Social change and the ‘social contract’ in adolescent develop-
ment. In L. J. Crockett & R. K. Silbereisen (Eds.), Negotiating adolescence in times of
social change (pp. 191–198). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Flanagan, C. A., & Faison, N. (2001). Youth civic development: Implications of research
for social policy and programs. Social Policy Report, Vol. XV (1). Ann Arbor, MI:
Society for Research in Child Development.
Flanagan, C. A., & Gallay, L. S. (1995). Reframing the meaning of “political” in research
with adolescents. Perspectives on Political Science, 24, 34–41.
Furman, W. (1996). The measurement of children and adolescent’s perceptions of friend-
ships: Conceptual and methodological issues. In W. M. Bukowski, A. F. Newcomb,
& W. W. Hartup (Eds.), The company they keep: Friendships in childhood and ado-
lescence (pp. 41–65). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Furman, W., & Buhrmester, D. (1985). Children’s perceptions of the personal relation-
ships in their social networks. Developmental Psychology, 21, 1016–1024.
Furman, W., & Collins, W. A. (2009). Adolescent romantic relationships and experi-
ences. In K. H. Rubin, W. Bukowski, & B. Laursen (Eds.), Handbook of peer interac-
tions, relationships, and groups (pp. 341–360). New York: Guilford.
Gardner, M., Roth, J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2008). Adolescents’ participation in organized
activities and developmental success 2 and 8 years after high school: Do sponsor-
ship, duration, and intensity matter? Developmental Psychology, 44, 814–830.
Hart, D., Donnelly, T. M., Youniss, J., & Atkins, R. (2007). High school community ser-
vice as a predictor of adult voting and volunteering. American Educational Research
Journal, 44, 197–219.
Hastings, P. D., Utendale, W. T., & Sullivan, C. (2007). The socialization of prosocial
development. In J. E. Grusec & P. D. Hastings (Eds.), Handbook of socialization:
Theory and research (pp. 638–664). New York: Guilford.
Havighurst, R. J. (1972). Development tasks and education. New York: McKay.
Hinde, R. A. (1979). Towards understanding relationships. London: Academic Press.
Keller, M. (2004). Self in relationship. In D. K. Lapsley & D. Narvaez (Eds.), Moral develop-
ment, self, and identity (pp. 267–298). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Keller, M., & Edelstein, W. (1993). The development of the moral self from childhood
to adolescence. In G. G. Noam, T. E. Wren, G. Nunner-Winkler, & W. Edelstein
(Eds.), The moral self (pp. 310–336). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Khaleque, A., & Rohner, R. P. (2002). Perceived parental acceptance-rejection and psy-
chological adjustment: A meta- analysis of cross-cultural and intracultural studies.
Journal of Marriage and Family, 64, 54–64.
Civic Development in Relational Perspective 205

Kochanska, G., & Murray, K. T. (2000). Mother-child mutually responsive orientation


and conscience development: From toddler to early school age. Child Development,
71, 417–431.
Larson, R., Brown, B. B., & Mortimer, J. (Eds.). (2002). Adolescents’ Preparation for the
Future: Perils and Promise [special issue]. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 12,
1–166.
Larson, R. W., Wilson, S., Brown, B. B., Furstenberg, F. F. Jr., & Verma, S. (2002).
Changes in adolescents’ interpersonal experiences: Are they being prepared for
adult relationships in the twenty-first century? Journal of Research on Adolescence,
12, 31–68.
Lerner, R. M. (2004). Liberty: Thriving and civic engagement among America’s youth.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Malti, T., & Buchmann, M. (2010). Socialization and individual antecedents of adoles-
cents’ and young adults’ moral motivation. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 39,
138–149.
Malti, T., Gummerum, M., Keller, M., & Buchmann, M. (2009). Children’s moral moti-
vation, sympathy, and prosocial behavior. Child Development, 80, 442–460.
Malti, T., & Keller, M. (2010). Development of moral emotions in cultural context. In
W. Arsenio & E. Lemerise (Eds.), Emotions, aggression, and morality in children:
Bridging development and psychopathology (pp. 177–198). Washington: American
Psychological Association.
Malti, T., & Noam, G. G. (2009). A developmental approach to the prevention of ado-
lescents’ aggressive behavior and the promotion of resilience. European Journal of
Developmental Science, 3, 235–246.
McLellan, J. A., & Youniss, J. (2003). Two systems of youth service: Determinants of vol-
untary and required youth community service. Journal of Youth and Adolescence,
32, 47–58.
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2005). Attachment theory and emotions in close rela-
tionships: Exploring the attachment-related dynamics of emotional reactions to
relational events. Personal Relationships, 12, 149–168.
Miller-Johnson, S., Coie, J. D., Maumary-Gremaud, A., Bierman, K., & Conduct
Problems Prevention Research Group (2002). Peer rejection and aggression and
early starter models of conduct disorder. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology,
30, 217–230.
Obradovic, J., & Masten, A. S. (2007). Developmental antecedents of young adult civic
engagement. Applied Developmental Science, 11, 2–19.
Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at school: What we know and what we can do. Cambridge,
MA: Blackwell.
Pancer, S. M., & Pratt, M. W. (1999). Social and family determinants of community ser-
vice involvement in Canadian youth. In M. Yates & J. Youniss (Eds.), Community
service and civic engagement in youth: International perspectives (pp. 32–55).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Passmore, A., & French, D. (2001). Development and administration of a measure to
assess adolescents’ participation in leisure activities. Adolescence, 36, 67–75.
Pedersen, S., Vitaro, F., Barker, E. D., & Borge, A. I. H. (2007). The timing of middle-
childhood peer rejection and friendship: Linking early behavior to early adolescent
adjustment. Child Development, 78, 1037–1051.
206 Rubin, Malti, and McDonald

Poulin, F., Dishion, T. J., & Haas, E. (1999). The peer influence paradox: Friendship
quality and deviancy training within male adolescent friendships. Merrill-Palmer
Quarterly, 45, 42–61.
Rohner, R. P. (1986). The warmth dimension: Foundations of parental acceptance-­rejection
theory. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Roisman, G. I., Masten, A. S., Coatsworth, J. D., & Tellegen, A. (2004). Salient and
emerging developmental tasks in the transition to adulthood. Child Development,
75, 123–133.
Rose-Krasnor, L. (1997). The nature of social competence: A theoretical review. Social
Development, 6, 111–135.
Rose-Krasnor, L., & Denham, S. (2009). Socio-emotional competence in early child-
hood. In K. H. Rubin, W. Bukowski, & B. Laursen (Eds.), The handbook of peer
interactions, relationships, and groups (pp. 162–179). New York: Guilford.
Rubin, K. H., Bukowski, W. M., & Parker, J. G. (2006a). Peer interactions, relationships,
and groups. In N. Eisenberg, W. Damon, R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child
psychology: Vol. 3, Social, emotional, and personality development (pp. 571–645).
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Rubin, K. H., Coplan, R. J., & Bowker, J. (2009). Social withdrawal and shyness in child-
hood and adolescence. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 141–171.
Rubin, K. H., Dwyer, K. M., Booth-LaForce, C., Kim, A. H., Burgess, K. B., & Rose-
Krasnor, L. (2004). Attachment, friendship, and psychosocial functioning in early
adolescence. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 24, 326–356.
Rubin, K. H., Lynch, D., Coplan, R., Rose-Krasnor, L., & Booth, C. L. (1994). “Birds of a
feather … :” Behavioral concordances and preferential personal attraction in chil-
dren. Child Development, 65, 1778–1785.
Rubin, K. H., Oh, W., Menzer, M., & Ellison, K. (2011). Dyadic relationships from a
cross-cultural perspective: Parent-child relationships and friendship. In X. Chen &
K. H. Rubin (Eds.), Socioemotional development in cultural context (pp. 208–236).
New York: Guilford.
Rubin, K. H., Wojslawowicz, J. C., Rose-Krasnor, L., Booth-LaForce, C., & Burgess, K. B.
(2006b). The best friendships of shy/withdrawn children: Prevalence, stability, and
relationship quality. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 34, 143–157.
Schulenberg, J. E., Sameroff, A. J., & Cicchetti, D. (2004). The transition to adulthood as a
critical juncture in the course of psychopathology and mental health. Development
and Psychopathology, 16, 799–806.
Smetana, J. G. (1997). Parenting and the development of social knowledge reconceptu-
alized: A social domain analysis. In J. E. Grusec & L. Kuczynski (Eds.), Parenting
and children’s internalization of values: A handbook of contemporary theory (pp.
162–192). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Sroufe, L. A. (1983). Infant–caregiver attachment and patterns of adaptation in preschool:
The roots of mal-adaptation and competence. In M. Perlmutter (Ed.), Minnesota
Symposia in Child Psychology (Vol. 16, pp. 41–83). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Stouthamer-Loeber, M., Wei, E., Loeber, R., & Masten, A. S. (2004). Desistance from
persistent serious delinquency in the transition to adulthood. Development and
Psychopathology, 16, 897–918.
Civic Development in Relational Perspective 207

Valdivia, I. A., Schneider, B. H., Chavez, K. L., & Chen, X. (2005). Social withdrawal and
maladjustment in a very group-oriented society. International Journal of Behavioral
Development, 29, 219–228.
van IJzendoorn, M. H. (1997). Attachment, emergent morality, and aggression: Toward
a developmental socioemotional model of antisocial behaviour. International
Journal of Behavioral Development, 21, 703–727.
van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Sagi-Schwartz, A. (2008). Cross-cultural patterns of attach-
ment: Universal and contextual dimensions. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.),
Handbook of attachment. Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed., pp.
880–905). New York: Guilford.
Wray-Lake, L., Syvertsen, A. K., & Flanagan, C. A. (2010, March). A multidimensional,
longitudinal approach to understanding adolescents’ values of social responsibility.
Paper presented at the Society for Research on Adolescence meeting, Philadelphia,
PA.
Yates, M., & Youniss, J. (1996). Community service and political-moral identity in ado-
lescents. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 6, 271–284.
Youniss, J., Bales, S., Christmas-Best, V., Diversi, M., McLaughlin, M., & Silbereisen, R.
(2002). Youth civic engagement in the twenty-first century. Journal of Research on
Adolescence, 12, 121–148.
Part Three
Impact of Values and Religion on
Adolescent Adjustment in Times of
Social Change
9 Marginalized Japanese Youth in
Post-industrial Japan
Motivational Patterns, Self-Perceptions, and the
Structural Foundations of Shifting Values

Vinai Norasakkunkit and Yukiko Uchida

Abstract
There is an increasing population of youth in Japan who are being pushed
to the periphery of Japanese society. These include the NEETs (Not in
Employment Education or Training), the Freeters (low-skill workers in highly
insecure jobs), and the hikikomori (social isolates). We argue that Japanese
youth marginalization has resulted, in large part, from economic and social
structural changes in post-industrial Japan. We further argue that any dis-
cussion of values and motivational processes of youth should be examined
within the context of the cultural and societal forces that are marginalizing
many of them. In doing so, we compare at-risk youth with mainstream youth
on independence and interdependence, post-materialist attitudes, and moti-
vational styles. Additionally, we discuss the role that religion has played on
helping youth transition into adulthood in the past versus in the present.
Finally, we conclude the chapter by discussing the youth volunteer move-
ment in the wake of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and what that might
represent for the values and future of Japanese youth.

Background on Japanese Values and Japanese Youth Problems


Markus and Kitayama’s (1991) classic theory of independent self-construal
in the West and interdependent self-construal in the East has served as a
parsimonious model for describing, explaining, and predicting cultural
differences in various mental operations between East and West, thereby
helping to make psychological theories more relevant to realms outside the
Western model of self. Markus and Kitayama’s cultural self-construal model
was primarily derived from studies in the United States and Japan with the
idea that these two cultures serve as useful approximations for psychologi-
cal realities in Western cultures and Eastern cultures, respectively.

211
212 Norasakkunkit and Uchida

Recently, however, some researchers have questioned whether Japanese


and Westerners are really all that different. Specifically, on an attitudinal
level, Japanese youth and American youth endorse about the same level
of individualistic tendencies and the Japanese are not necessarily more
interdependent than their Western counterparts (see Oyserman, Coon,
& Kemmelmier, 2002). Indeed, in an attempt to move from an industri-
alized society to a post-industrialized society, Japanese institutions have
recently been encouraging the expression of individuality and down-
playing the image of collective operation (Matsumoto, 2002). However,
whereas these trends are more easily captured by self-reported attitude
measures of cultural values, they are still likely to be congruent with tra-
ditional values when cultural values are measured at the implicit or auto-
matic level(Uchida, 2002; Uchida, Park, & Kitayama, 2008). In fact, in a
recent study, when Japanese youth were primed to increase attitude levels
related to interdependence, they resisted the manipulation and responded
in the opposite direction by decreasing levels of self-reported interdepen-
dence, whereas independent priming worked in the expected direction by
increasing levels of self-reported independence (Norasakkunkit, 2007).
This may suggest that Japanese youth today are consciously trying to resist
the idea that they are predominantly interdependent, even though inter-
dependent tendencies still show up reliably on a plethora of studies that
examine Japanese youth responses at the level of automatic psychological
processes (e.g., Kitayama, Mesquita, & Karasawa, 2006; Masuda & Nisbett,
2001; Uchida, 2002; Uchida, Park, & Kitayama, 2008). Thus, the stability of
psychological processes oriented toward interdependence among Japanese
may suggest that the resistance to interdependence may only be manifest-
ing at a somewhat superficial level or is overstated by the volatility of self-
reported values.
On the other hand, there is an easily identifiable and growing population
of Japanese teens and young adults, cutting across all social classes, who are
living lifestyles that deviate significantly from interdependent norms pre-
dominant in Japanese society. Indeed, many of them can be described as
cultural dropouts. In addition to the two-thirds of the so-called Freeters who
do irregular, nonstandard work and have virtually no prospects of eventu-
ally securing a full-time job (Statistics Bureau, 2011), there is an estimated
640,000 NEETs (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, 2009), which stands
for Not in Employment, Education, or Training, a term originally coined by
the British government to describe British youth who were temporarily not
participating in society (DfEE, 2001). There is also an estimated 700,000
Marginalized Japanese Youth 213

hikikomori or social isolates (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, 2009)


who withdraw into their own bedrooms from six months to decades at a
time without necessarily suffering from any individual psychopathology
(Koyama et al., 2010; Saito, 1998). Finally, birth and marriage rates are
declining (Statistics Bureau, 2011) and suicide rates are high: the second
highest among the G-8 nations after Russia and the leading cause of death
among youth below 30 years of age (The Cabinet Office, 2007). Japan faces
a situation where a growing number of Japanese youth are deviating from
the normative path to adulthood and success.
On the one hand, these disturbing trends among many Japanese youth
have received much attention from clinical psychologists and government
agencies as issues of individual adjustment problems that require individual
rehabilitation and/or therapy (e.g., Sakai, Horikawa, Nonaka, Matsumoto,
& Hirakawa, 2011). On the other hand, there are those who see these trends
as a “psychopathology of motivation” (e.g., Koyama et al., 2010) or as the
moral failure of young people living in an affluent society (e.g., Yamada,
1999). In this chapter, we attempt to understand these trends in the con-
text of the sociocultural and multi-layered structural forces (global, cul-
tural, societal, institutional, and religious) in which they are occurring and
therefore see them as potentially being, in large part, consequences of such
forces and even as symptoms of a society in transition or a society with
core institutions attempting to resist an inevitable transition. This approach
to understanding youth psychology is similar to Bronfenbrenner’s (1979)
Ecological Systems Theory of human development in which the many
layers of society and environment have to be considered in the study of
child development. Indeed, in a rapidly changing world of globalization,
it is essential that any discussion of values and motivational processes of
young people be examined within such a context, especially if the society
in question is in the midst of transitioning, either smoothly or turbulently,
from an economically affluent industrialized society into a post-industri-
alized society where the young become increasingly concerned with post-
materialist values that lead them to seek out meaning and self-fulfillment
rather than primarily security and stability (Arnett, 2004; Inglehart, 2008;
Trommsdorff, Chapter 1 in this volume).

Caught between Culture and Society


There is a growing historical trend toward valuing inner happiness over
working hard for their in-group among today’s Japanese youth (Mainichi
214 Norasakkunkit and Uchida

Japan, 2010). Indeed, many Japanese youth report future goals that do not
include becoming a leader or overachieving in their careers but rather hav-
ing more leisure time (Zielenziger, in press). The idea that Japanese youth
are starting to place greater value on their inner happiness is consistent with
Inglehart’s (1977) contention that as industrialized societies accumulate
wealth to the point where the basic needs of most members of the soci-
ety are met for a prolonged period of time, individual values, especially
among the youth, will begin to switch from materialist values (emphasizing
economic and physical security) to post-materialist values (emphasizing
meaning and self-expression).
Inglehart (1977) argues that the switch in values from materialist to
post-materialist among the youth can occur even as the values of older gen-
erations remain unaffected by the economic affluence of society. Inglehart
further argues that under these circumstances, it should not be surprising
that an intergenerational gap, and even an intergenerational conflict, could
ensue. However, in Western societies, the youth who are in conflict with the
older generation will express their grievances through rebellion and pro-
test, as was seen during the Vietnam era in the United States.
What is different about Japan is that despite the two-decade long eco-
nomic stagnation, structural changes in the labor markets, and the impor-
tance of fresh ideas, innovation, creativity, flexibility, openness, trust, and
calculated risks in sustaining a healthy post-industrial economy, a rigid
seniority system within corporate structures and government bureaucracy
is still very much in place (Sato, 2010). Consequently, young Japanese peo-
ple continue to be disempowered from having much of a voice in reshaping
core institutions or playing an active role in the economic futures of their
society. To make matters worse, economic opportunities in the form of long-
term employment, are still largely preserved for middle-aged male workers.
Many young job seekers have to take on a series of part-time or temporary
jobs with little prospects for upward mobility, as is the case for most Freeters
(Genda, 2005; Kosugi, 2008). Even in such precarious positions, it is in the
interest of the youth to remain in the labor market as it becomes substan-
tially more challenging to reenter the Japanese workforce should there be
any gaps in their employment histories. The tendency for youth to fall into
such disempowered positions suggests that, as one analyst has put it, “Japan
is a country run by old men, for old men” (Lehmann, 2002). This is espe-
cially true at a time when the geriatric population is growing whereas the
youth population is shrinking.
Thus, it is not surprising that within the protected bubble of their unre-
formed lifetime employment system, the senior elites continue to propagate
Marginalized Japanese Youth 215

traditional cultural expectations for Japanese youth to follow the idealized


life course: transition from full-time students to full-time employees in a
large company by the time they graduate from secondary or tertiary school.
Those who deviate from this “legitimate” path to security and success, or
happen to miss the very narrow window of opportunity to transition from
school to full-time work before graduation, are relegated to the periphery
of society and regarded as second-class citizens with few prospects of ever
entering a long-term employment system. The problem, of course, is that
the well-oiled system that once helped to smoothly transition youth from
one stable social location or ba (i.e., the school) to the next stable social
location or ba (i.e., the long-term employment system) during the eco-
nomic bubble years of the 1970s and 1980s is no longer in place for many of
today’s younger generation.
This is especially true for those attempting to transition from high school
to work (Brinton, 2011). However, it is also true for an increasing popula-
tion of university graduates who can now obtain higher education degrees,
no matter how poor their secondary school performance was, as a result of
the large number of private colleges and universities viciously competing to
recruit from a rapidly shrinking youth population. Given the easy access to
higher education today, employers are much more cautious about recruit-
ing university graduates, who they perceive as being products of a system
that promotes “credential inflation,” unless they are coming from the most
elite of higher educational institutions (Kariya, 2011).
For those who are fortunate enough to make it into the protected bubble
of the long-term employment system, interdependent norms and expecta-
tions prevail, with its accompanying benefits for security, assurances, sense
of belonging, and structural supports. Those outside the bubble are left to
fend for themselves without a secure social location in which to belong, or
else they take refuge within their homes and families as NEETs and hikiko-
mori. Even when youth do enter the full-time employment system, many
face adverse circumstances that make it unpleasant for them to remain in
their place of employment for a prolonged period of time, let alone for a
lifetime. In interviewing such youth and their corporate elders, Mathews
(2004) found that many of the young employees in large corporations are
criticized by their corporate elders as being “self-absorbed,” having “no guts,”
“really being unable to think,” and “lacking in common sense” (p. 124). The
young employees, in turn, complain that despite all the superficial attempts
to liberalize corporate practices and structures, “not much ever changes” (p.
124). Furthermore, they also felt that there was no way they could express
their discontent within the company. Having said that, it is probably the
216 Norasakkunkit and Uchida

case that the younger generation is simply not as motivated to work as hard
as their predecessors who were strongly driven by the desire to improve
their own standards of living while building up their own nation from the
ruins of World War II to become a global economic powerhouse by the end
of the twentieth century.
Mathews (2004) argues that whereas criticisms from the older genera-
tion to the younger generation are likely to occur in every generation and
that every younger generation will grow older only to similarly criticize
the next younger generation (see also Trzesniewski & Donnellan, 2010),
he also argues that young Japanese today may never be like their elders
because many young employees intend to eventually leave their companies,
even though doing so would likely result in a decline in salary and status.
Mathews thus concluded that many of the young employees’ discontent
with their companies outweighed the financial loss and insecurities they
may experience in leaving their companies. This willingness to put self-
fulfillment over security also speaks to the emergence of post-materialist
values of Japanese youth today.
Thus, even when the select few (mostly males) make it into the long-
term employment system, their potential for leaving their companies may
be associated with less secure prospects than their predecessors were able
to take for granted. Because Japanese society continues to operate under a
breadwinner ideology, the lowered prospects for economic security among
young Japanese males today means that Japanese women would be less
interested in marrying them or wanting to start families with them. Indeed,
the lowered status of men in such a breadwinner system is arguably respon-
sible for the dangerously low marriage and birth rates among young adults
in Japan (Brinton, 2011).
In sum, the scholarly work of researchers like Brinton (2011), Genda
(2005), Kariya (2011), and Kosugi (2008) have revealed that the increasing
population of Freeters, NEETs, and hikokomori in modern Japan stem from
young people being trapped between cultural expectations and the reality of
a society in which the institutional means for supporting those expectations
are hardly in place anymore. Yet, no obvious alternative path to achieving
full status in society seems to exist other than to follow the ethos of the
post-war manufacturing economy where self-sacrifice and constant cali-
bration of the self to social expectations are to be made for one’s company
and for national economic growth. Post-materialist values have little room
to be realized and actualized in this type of social reality. It should therefore
come as no surprise that the youth of today’s Japan are becoming increas-
ingly demotivated to conform to interdependent norms. At the same time,
Marginalized Japanese Youth 217

however, they may also be feeling lost about how to fend for themselves in a
post-industrialized world fraught with uncertainties when all their parents
and teachers did for them was to aspire for them to enter the security of
the protected bubble, albeit a shrinking one, of the long-term employment
system. Nor did their parents and teachers seem to consider what would
happen to them if they failed. Ultimately, this is, in large part, how Japan
created its own lost generation in the 21st century (Zielenziger, 2006).

The Role of Religion and the Lack Thereof


According to Zielenziger (2006), when the IMF (International Monetary
Fund) crisis hit South Korea in 1998, largely as a result of rigid hierar-
chy, nepotism, corporate corruption, and a lack of transparency taking its
toll on the national economy, citizens and political leaders had to make
a choice between accumulating more national debt as the status quo was
maintained or making major structural and ideological adjustments at the
national level. Quite boldly, the government decided to implement the lat-
ter option very quickly, in part, by galvanizing as many of its citizens to
sell as much of the personal gold they owned as possible to prop up the
value of their currency. The government did this, in part, by working with
Korean churches and appealing to their citizens’ calling to serve their own
country, even as they were asked to prepare for social turmoil in the pro-
cess. Fortunately, this bold move paid off! Over 1.5 million citizens donated
what amounted to over one billion dollars’ worth of gold. Within a few
months of the crisis, a new democratically elected president implemented
structural and legal reforms that encouraged greater consumerism, allow-
ing failing companies to fail, making it easier for employers to lay off redun-
dant workers, and flattening the hierarchical structure of the employment
system. Consequently, within four years of the crisis, South Korea paid off
all of its IMF obligations.
Despite being a secularist American Jew himself, Zielenziger (2006)
argues that Christianity, especially Protestantism, which has now gained a
strong foothold in South Korea, played a major role in affording the type of
agency and new value system that it took to adapt to an era of uncertainty
and to make bold moves on the part of the government, organizations, and
individual citizens. Specifically, the culturally embedded Korean churches,
Zielenziger argues, “coached” the Korean people to embrace building trust
among strangers, forming new social networks, accepting universal ethics,
and harboring a healthy attitude toward reasonable risk-taking (for more
on the psychological influences of the Protestant ethic, see also Giorgi &
218 Norasakkunkit and Uchida

Marsh, 1990; McClelland, 1961; Quinn & Crocker, 1999; Sanchez-Burks,


2002; Weber, 1904/1930). These institutional and structural reforms also
prevented many Korean youth from falling through the cracks of a hier-
archical autocratic system that would have narrowed the opportunities for
them to gain full status in their own societies.
In contrast, monotheistic Abrahamic religions like Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam were sufficiently muted throughout Japanese history to prevent
them from gaining a strong foothold and thereby threatening the authority
of warrior autocrats such as the Shogun during the Edo period or the deity
status of the emperor during the Meiji and the former half of the Showa
eras, for example. Moreover, the facts that the Japanese culture is steeped
deeply in a system based on social assurances rather than on social trust
(Yamagishi, 1999) and employs a habit of relying on avoidance strategies
rather than promotion strategies (Hamamura, Meijer, Heine, Kamaya, &
Hori, 2009) make it all the more difficult to expect the same kind of trans-
formative leaps that took place in South Korea to also occur in Japan.
Of course, there is an indigenous religion in Japan, called Shintoism,
which translates to the “Way of the God.” Shintoism is not quite an orga-
nized religion but a somewhat disorganized system of folklore, history, and
mythology. Therefore, it can be practiced quite flexibly with no absolute
dogma and can serve various purposes, including war memorials, harvests,
romance, individual success, and so forth. If Shintoism played a role in
youth inclusion, it did so in pre-war Japan when individuals lived primarily
in agricultural communities. According to nationally renowned religious
philosopher and folklore scholar, Toji Kamata (2000), in such communi-
ties, there was a need to initiate adolescents into the adult world and so
Shintoism was used to devise coming-of-age rituals in which adolescents
had to go through an ordeal before being recognized by the village elders as
full status adult members of the community.
Kamata (2000) argues that the initiating of youth into the adult world in
these village communities served to reify the feeling in young adults that
they were recognized as meaningful members of society who were needed
and valued by other adults. However, during the post-war period, many
village communities were dismantled for the sake of rapid urbanization.
As a result, local coming-of-age rituals were replaced by a national holi-
day in which youth, in the year that they turn twenty years old, attend a
sanitized coming-of-age ceremony called seijinshiki or literally, “Coming of
Age Ceremony” where they are simply “declared” adults and given money
from the government without having to go through any kind of ordeal or
initiation process. Kamata is critical of this ceremony, as it fails to trigger a
Marginalized Japanese Youth 219

true paradigm shift for the youth to conceive of himself/herself as an adult


who is truly included in the adult world; it does not provide a sense of being
taken seriously, a sense of meaning and purpose, or a sense of needing and
being needed by others. Although declaring a 20-year-old an adult may
seem somewhat premature given that today’s youth need more time to pre-
pare themselves for the adult world than was true in the past (see Arnett,
2004), it is unlikely that the ceremony itself would be any more effective
in instilling a sense of belonging to the adult world had the official age of
adulthood been pushed up by a few years or more.
Given the lack of some kind of initiation process, especially in a hierar-
chical social structure, the youth are more likely to remain disjointed from
a society where the cost of societal structural changes are unevenly distrib-
uted across generations. Indeed, Kamata (personal communication) points
out that there are plenty of themes embedded in the Japanese pop culture
about how the youth in Japan are yearning to be included and needed. This
theme is quite apparent, for example, in popular Japanese science-fiction
animation stories such as Gundam and Evangelion where the most tal-
ented pilots of war machine robots are adolescents who the elders have to
constantly rely on. One can also interpret these portrayals of youth in fan-
tasy stories as projections of youth who want to assert their centrality to
society.
Although it is probably true that voluntary religious organization can
easily create opportunities for youth to be initiated into the adult world,
the Japanese are often described as having shuukyo arerugee (an allergy to
religion). In post-war Japan, various “New Religion” movements started
to erupt throughout the country to address issues and concerns of living
in an era of rapid development, including poverty, disease, and even self-
discovery. In 1995, however, all the New Religion momentum came to a
screeching halt when the infamous Aum Shinrikyou cult, in an attempt to
implement their apocalyptic plans, dispersed sarin gas in a Tokyo subway,
killing 12 people, seriously injuring 54, and affecting some 980 more.
According to Kamata (personal communication), the national suspicion
toward religion grew exponentially after the Tokyo sarin gas attack, espe-
cially among the young, and there was no turning back for them. However,
the Japanese tended to target their suspicions on religious dogma rather
than all things supernatural. In fact, the Japanese people still remain highly
spiritual to this day, especially in their receptivity to supernatural beliefs
such as “power spots” (places where people can go to collect positive mys-
tical energy), astrology, haunted houses, and a variety of other supersti-
tions. In other words, innocuous supernatural beliefs, devoid of any kind
220 Norasakkunkit and Uchida

of dogmatic spiritual messages, continue to be tolerated in the mainstream


and have, in fact, captivated the Japanese imagination, as is reflected in
much of Japanese pop culture (e.g., anime, J-horror, morning fortune-
­telling shows, etc.).
In the interest of not leaving out the other historically influential reli-
gion in Japan, Buddhism, it is worth mentioning that Zen Buddhism
has very much influenced the Japanese post-war ethic of hard work and
self-sacrifice. Zielenziger (2006) discusses how Buddhist doctrines, as
reinterpreted by the seventieth century scholar Baigan Ishida, saw hard
labor as an expression not of self or even selflessness but of self-denial.
Zielenziger argues that the meticulous attention to detail that Japanese
show in their craftsmanship, such as in the fine artwork inside a kimono
sleeve, pays homage to this ideal because it is the labor itself, not effi-
ciency, that matters. This kind of work ethic and self-denial is not appeal-
ing to the increasing population of marginalized Japanese youth who are
probably more concerned with not having enough outlets in society to
express their post-materialist values and need for self-fulfillment. Any
religion that interferes with self-fulfillment for youth who are begin-
ning to embrace post-materialistic values will tend to become less pop-
ular among them (Schwartz, Chapter 4 in this volume). Therefore, it
should come as no surprise that the explicit practice of Zen Buddhism
has been phasing out for some time in modern Japan (Kamata, personal
communication).
Given the peripheral role that religion plays in Japanese society, reli-
gion is unlikely to facilitate the kind of agency and value system that can
help transform Japanese institutional and social structures to the bene-
fit of Japanese youth any time soon. Instead, Japan will just have to find
another path to reinvent itself on its own terms, no matter how arduous and
time-consuming that process is. In the meantime, however, youth margin-
alization in Japan, such as NEET and hikikomori, is likely to persist. The
psychological consequences and implications of youth marginalization is
what we turn to next.

Deviation from Interdependence in Values and Motivation


Traditionally, most cross-cultural psychological studies have relied on
examining segments of the population that represent the center of a
given society; namely, middle class and occupationally functional indi-
viduals. Relying on this segment of the population, whether the sample
Marginalized Japanese Youth 221

is young or old, may necessarily create a tendency to endorse an entity


view of culture rather than a dynamic view of culture, especially if the
center of society represents the relatively stable aspects of society. If this
is the case, it is more likely that those who are most affected by economic
structural change because of globalization processes are segments of the
population that flow from the center of society to the fringes of society
at increasing rates. As these individuals move from the center of society
to the periphery of society, they may no longer be under the pressure
to internalize the dominant psychological tendencies of their society
and may be able to maintain more “atypical” psychological tendencies,
whether they were prone to those tendencies to begin with or whether
they adopted them as a consequence of moving to alternative spaces in
their societies.
We have taken the approach of comparing young people who are likely
to remain in the center of society with those who are NEET or who are
at risk of becoming NEET. We believe that the differences between these
two groups’ values and motivational processes represent changing trends
in society owing to the multi-layered structural forces in society that are
pushing many young people to the periphery. Moreover, it should come
as no surprise that in any society undergoing post-industrialization, there
will be economic instability. Furthermore, it is the youth who are going to
be affected most by this economic instability, usually by experiencing the
most insecurity in the labor markets (OECD stat, 2009). Thus, the strategy
of comparing youth who are NEETs and hikokomori or at risk of becoming
NEET versus youth not at risk seemed to be a valid cross-sectional strategy
for capturing shifting values and motivational processes among youth in
a society that is presumably in the midst of shifting to a new institutional
equilibrium because of economic structural changes.

Comparing Self-Relevant Values


To measure values, Uchida and Norasakkunkit (2011) distributed survey
packets to: (1) NEETs in a nationwide online survey targeted at those who
are not employed and are not seeking employment, (2) recovering hikikomori
clients through a non-profit organization (NPO) that reaches out to them, (3)
Kyoto University students, an elite group of students who are likely to thrive
in the mainstream of Japanese society, and (4) North American university stu-
dents. The North American sample was included to compare NEET tendencies
across cultures. We also included a NEET Risk Factor Scale we developed that
required individuals to evaluate themselves on actual attitudes that NEETs and
222 Norasakkunkit and Uchida

hikokomori harbor, according to the literature. After validating the scale on


these known groups, we then used the scores on this scale to divide the Kyoto
University students into a high risk group and a low-to-moderate risk group
(henceforth referred to as low risk group) according to a cut-off score.
Uchida and Norasakkunkit (2011) also measured self-reported val-
ues congruent with independence and interdependence with the Singelis
(1994) Self-Construal Scale and implicit values related to independence
and interdependence with the Self-Construal Implicit Association Test
(Self-Construal IAT; Uchida, Park, & Kitayama, 2008), although for prag-
matic reasons, the Self-Construal IAT was not included in the nationwide
online survey for non-hikikomori NEETs.
The findings confirmed that: (1) NEET tendencies are more likely to be
found in the Japanese population relative to the North American popu-
lation; (2) NEETs, hikikomori, and high risk students in Japan were also
found, as expected, to deviate from interdependent values (i.e., scored lower
on interdependence), both at the self-report and implicit levels, relative to
low risk students; (3) surprisingly, it was also found that NEETs and hikiko-
moris also scored lower on independent self-construal relative to students,
although there was no difference between high risk students and low risk
students in levels of independent self-construal.

Comparing Motivational Tendencies


The Japanese idea of persistence is believed to be the key to achieving great
success through the focus of group harmony (Wagatsuma, 1983). Given
that the phenomena of NEETs and hikikomori have also been understood as
a “psychopathology of motivation” (Koyama et al., 2010), it was also impor-
tant to go beyond a self-report study to compare this kind of motivation
between high risk students and low risk students at the behavioral level.
To do this, Norasakkunkit and Uchida (2011) examined the conditions in
which high risk students and low risk students would persist on a challeng-
ing task by replicating the procedure used by Heine and colleagues (2001)
who showed that mainstream Japanese persisted longer on a similar follow-
up challenging task after they had failed at an initial challenging task, com-
pared to after they had succeeded at that initial task. In contrast, this pattern
was reversed for North Americans. Presumably, this was because of the
emphasis on constant improvement through the responsiveness to negative
feedback over the emphasis on self-enhancement through responsiveness
to positive feedback as the more adaptive motivational style in Japan’s
mainstream, interdependent cultural system (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, &
Nisbett, 1998). Indeed, persistence and determination, referred to in daily
Marginalized Japanese Youth 223

life as gambari or gambaru, is often the hallmark of Japanese motivation to


try to work hard and meet others’ expectations.

High Risk versus Low Risk Youth.  Norasakkunkit and Uchida (2011) were able
to replicate the prototypical Japanese persistence pattern produced in Heine
and colleagues’ (2001) study among the low risk students. However, among
the high risk students, the pattern was reversed, as was expected. This finding
suggests that high risk students exhibited a persistence style that deviated from
that which would be considered adaptive in an interdependent cultural sys-
tem. Although the persistence style of high risk students appeared to resemble
that of the North American students found in Heine and colleagues’ study, a
closer look at the association between NEET tendencies and persistence levels,
through simple slope analyses, suggested that whereas NEET tendencies were
indeed associated with being demotivated by failure, NEET tendencies were
not necessarily associated with being more motivated by success.

Changing Motivation across Generations.  The combination of high risk


students being lower on interdependent values and their tendency to devi-
ate from a persistence style oriented toward interdependence may suggest
a general refusal to conform to interdependent norms and expectations
among high risk students, NEETs, and hikikomoris. However, in order to
suggest that distancing oneself from interdependent norms and expecta-
tions may be a trend among Japanese youth today, such a trend has to be
observable among youth who are also not necessarily at risk of being mar-
ginalized in Japanese society, even if such trends are subtle.
Fortunately, because both sets of Japanese data from Heine and colleague
(2001) and Norasakkunkit and Uchida (2011) came from undergraduate
students at the same university under the exact same experimental condi-
tions exactly 10 years apart, it was also fruitful to compare the two samples
on overall persistence, regardless of feedback condition, to look for histori-
cal trends associated with a decreased level of persistence.
When the data was examined in this way, it was indeed confirmed that
there was a generation main effect that suggested that the low risk and high
risk students were more similar to each other and therefore different from
the students from 10 years ago. Specifically, the students from 10 years ago
were willing to persist and persevere for a significantly longer period of time
than the high risk and low risk students of today under the same experi-
mental conditions, whereas the difference in persistence time between the
high risk students and low risk students of today was not statistically signif-
icant (see Figure 9.1).
224 Norasakkunkit and Uchida

Persistance time (seconds)


1,200

1,000

800

600

400

200

0
Hi Risk Kyodai Low Risk Kyodai Kyodai Students 1999
Students 2009 Students 2009

Figure 9.1.  Overall persistence time: Kyoto University (Kyodai) students in 2009
versus 1999.

Post-materialist Values
At face value, it is tempting to simply suggest that the lifestyles chosen by
Freeters and NEETs represent youth’s post-materialist values and rebellion
against what they perceive to be outmoded values embodied in society’s
expectation for them to conform to the “legitimate” path to responsible and
respectable Japanese adulthood. Although there is no doubt that some youth
have chosen to lead a lifestyle of a NEET for those reasons, and indeed, such
explanations were quite popular in the 1990s (e.g., see Yamada, 1999), we
tend to agree with Brinton (2011), Genda (2005), and Zielenziger (2006)
that the problems of Freeters, NEETs, and hikikomori are largely a function
of changing societal structures that are pushing young Japanese people to
the periphery of society.
Therefore, to look for signs of post-materialist values, it is more appro-
priate to directly measure attitudes and choices that are in the control of
the individual. One way is to look at attitudes toward competition, pre-
sumably because competition is a value that tends to promote material-
ist interests but detracts from post-material pursuits, unless the society is
deeply entrenched in the Protestant ethic like the United States where atti-
tudes toward competition tends to remain quite favorable (see Hayward &
Kemmelmeier, 2007; Weber, 1904/1930). Thus, if some segment of mar-
ginalized Japanese youth (i.e., NEETs and hikikomori) represent individuals
who are most affected by structural changes in society, it seemed reasonable
to compare Kyoto University students with NEETs/hikikomori on attitudes
toward competition to see if there is a trend toward moving away from
competition as a necessary virtue for society.
Marginalized Japanese Youth 225

In Uchida and Norasakkunkit’s (2011) previously discussed study com-


paring values between students and marginalized youth, five items measuring
attitudes toward competition were also included in the survey packet. These
items were: (1) “I grew up in a competitive environment,” (2) “I don’t want to
work in a competitive environment,” (3) “Competition does not do anyone
any good,” (4) “Competition brings progress to society,” and (5) “There are
many competitive people around me.” Because this set of items was not cohe-
sive enough to collectively measure attitudes toward competition, levels of
agreement on a 5-point Likert scale were compared separately for each item.
There was no group difference on items 1 and 5, which suggests that both
samples were equally exposed to the idea of competition. However, margin-
alized youth scored significantly: (1) higher in their desire not to work in a
competitive environment; (2) higher in the belief that competition does not
do anyone any good, and (3) lower in their belief that competition brings
progress to society. These findings suggest Japanese youth may be moving
away from seeing competition as a necessary virtue for society.
What about Japanese youth who are not as affected by society’s structural
changes? One way to investigate this question is to examine the choices that
youth make for their academic majors. Students, parents, and even pro-
fessors have ideas for what majors are more practical than others (Moore,
2009). Thus, if economic and physical security take precedence over self-
expression and self-fulfillment, then students should choose “practical”
majors with presumably a higher pay-off in the job market, such as busi-
ness, engineering, computer science, math, and natural science. On the
other hand, if self-expression and self-fulfillment take precedence over
economic and physical security, then students may choose “less practical”
majors (e.g., art, humanities, and social sciences). The choice for practi-
cal majors should be especially compelling when the cost of a university
education is very high, which is usually the case for any student studying
abroad for their college degrees. Given this logic, we decided to examine
some archival data on international students in the United States to com-
pare students from more interdependently-oriented societies.
If it is the case that there is a growing trend among Japanese youth who
are embracing post-materialist values, then there should be more Japanese
students than students from other interdependently-oriented societies
who choose less practical majors. We therefore examined archived data
from the Institute of International Education (Chow & Bhuandari, 2011)
and looked at the break down by majors of students coming only from
Asian countries among the 25 top countries that send their students to
the United States for higher education (see Table 9.1). The first column
Table 9.1.  Breakdown by Nationality and Major of International Students in the United States

Rank Place of Business/ Engine- Physic- Math/ Social Intensive Fine/ Health Education Huma- Unde- Other * “Practical” “Less
Origin Manag ering al/Life Comp Scienc English Applied Profes (%) nities clared (%) Majors Practical”
ement Scien uter es (%) (%) Arts sions (%) (%) (combined Majors
(%) ces (%) Scien (%) (%) first four (combined
ce (%) columns) remaining
(%) columns,
excluding
undeclared
majors (%)
 1 China 24.30 20.20 12. 60 10.70 6.70 4.90 2.80 2.10 1.90 1.10 2.60 10.10 67.80 29.60
 2 India 15.30 38.80 10.20 19.80 3.00 0.20 1.40 4.90 0.70 0.60 0.90 4.20 84.10 15.00
 3 South 17.00 12.60 7.60 5.20 10.00 4.90 10.80 5.10 3.90 4.70 4.10 14.10 42.40 53.50
Korea
 5 Taiwan 25.50 16.60 9.40 5.80 7.10 4.60 7.70 4.00 5.80 1.90 1.80 9.80» 57.30 40.90
 6 Japan 20.90 4.40 5.70 2.90 13.20 11.30 8.80 3.20 3.40 4.40 4.80 17.00 33.90 61.30
 7 Saudi 22.10 24.00 4.10 9.60 2.50 21.40 1.20 4.20 2.00 0.80 2.80 5.30 59.80 37.40
Arabia
 9 Vietnam 39.70 10.80 6.80 9.40 3.40 6.30 2.60 5.50 1.60 1.20 3.50 9.20 66.70 29.80
10 Turkey 18.60% 23.30% 7.90% 10.00% 12.60% 4.70% 3.60% 1.10% 3.70% 0.60% 2.20% 9.70% 59.80% 38.00%
11 Nepal 26.20% 13.80% 15.80% 11.70% 6.00% 0.20% 1.40% 9.20% 0.80% 1.90% 1.80% 11.20% 67.50% 30.70%
15 Thailand 26.60% 18.80% 7.10% 8.30% 7.00% 4.40% 3.70% 4.40% 3.10% 1.70% 2.30% 12.60% 60.80% 36.90%
16 Hong 31.90% 9.40% 7.40% 4.90% 13.80% 2.10% 6.10% 2.30% 1.20% 2.40% 5.70% 12.80% 53.60% 40.70%
Kong
18 Indonesia 36.70% 18.80% 5.30% 6.30% 6.30% 6.20% 5.80% 3.50% 2.50% 1.80% 2.00% 10.70% 67.10% 36.80%
21 Malaysia 21.50% 28.40% 10.50% 6.00% 8.00% 0.70% 3.10% 3.90% 3.00% 1.40% 4.30% 9.20% 66.40% 29.30%
23 Pakistan 24.50% 23.20% 6.10% 10.70% 9.50% 0.90% 2.50% 5.10% 2.70% 1.90% 3.30% 960% 64.50% 32.20%
*  Includes primarily agriculture, communications, law, general studies, and multi-interdisciplinary studies.
Note:  Data from the Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, retrieved May 12, 2011 from http://www.iie.org/opendoors.
Marginalized Japanese Youth 227

ranks the countries according to the number of international students


sent from those countries. Japan is ranked sixth. The top row displays
the various majors in order of popularity from left to right. Not surpris-
ingly, the top four majors among international students are the practi-
cal majors, followed by the less practical majors. For each country, we
summed the percentages of the first four columns (starting with Business/
Management and ending with Math/Computer Science) to calculate the
aggregate percentage of students from that country who selected a prac-
tical major. The cells for the remaining columns, excluding undeclared
category, was summed for each country to compute the aggregate per-
centages of students from each country who selected the less practical
major. As expected, Japan ranked at the bottom of the Asian countries
in the selection of practical majors and at the top of the Asian countries
in the selection of less practical majors. Incidentally, the ranking did not
change for Japan whether or not African countries were also included in
the list and whether or not the “other” majors category was included in
the computations of aggregate percentages.
These findings suggest that Japanese international students, despite the
high cost of studying in the United States as international students, were
more willing to select majors based on their own preferences and self-ful-
fillment rather than based on a commonly perceived economic pay-off for
selecting the practical majors. This is an indication that there is a growing
trend among Japanese youth to embrace post-materialistic values in their
choices. This trend is probably not unique to Japan. As other interdepen-
dently-oriented societies begin to enter the post-industrial phase of their
society, the youth in those societies will likely make similar choices that
Japanese youth are making now. Indeed, there is some evidence of such
shifting values among Chinese adolescents in China today as well (see
Chen, Wang, & Liu, Chapter 10 in this volume).
Taken together, the findings discussed above suggest that marginal-
ized Japanese youth such as Freeters, NEETs, and hikikomori may represent
an extreme version of a growing trend among today’s Japanese youth to
deviate, to some degree, from interdependent values and from interdepen-
dently-oriented motivational processes. At the same time, Japanese youth
are more often embracing a greater desire for individual self-fulfillment
and self-expression. Although such trends should be expected in any inter-
dependently-oriented society undergoing a transition to a post-industrial
economy, what is unique about Japan is the manifestation of these trends as
chronic and targeted marginalization of youth.
228 Norasakkunkit and Uchida

Volunteerism and its Lessons for Japanese Youth Values


On March 11, 2011, a devastating earthquake (magnitude 9 on the Richter
scale) shook northeast Japan and was followed by catastrophic tsunami
waves of up to about 130 feet that killed over 15,000 residents in the region.
Additionally, 8,500 citizens were declared missing and presumed dead, over
5,000 people injured, and millions either lost their homes or suffered signif-
icant damages to their homes. To make matters worse, the tsunami struck
a number of nuclear power plants in Fukushima prefecture and triggered a
nuclear disaster rated at the same level of disaster as the Chernobyl nuclear
power plant meltdown.
In a government sponsored nationwide survey with a sample size of over
10,700 individuals ages 20 to 39, Uchida, Takahashi, and Kawahara (2011)
found that 68 percent of their sample reported having their values signifi-
cantly impacted as a direct result of the earthquake. In addition to reporting
that they were significantly disturbed by the disaster, they indicated that
they reported having reevaluated what they appreciated in their lives. For
90 percent of them, the value they placed on their social connectedness
with others increased the most. The other value that increased was the value
to work. These people reported that the earthquake increased their own
motivation to work harder. The only exception to these trends were those
who tended to score high on NEET tendencies according to the Uchida and
Norasakkunkit (2011) NEET Risk Factor Scale. For these people, there was
a tendency not to think or be affected, either positively or negatively, by the
disaster. This unfortunate finding speaks to the chronic demotivated states
of many NEETs and hikikomoris, suggesting that they are probably in a state
of disillusionment and emotional numbness (see also Kameda & Inukai,
under review).
For the youth who were impacted by the disaster, many of them ful-
filled their need for social connectedness and hard work by volunteering in
the disaster areas. Just as they did in the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Western
Japan, which killed close to 6,500 individuals and left 300,000 individuals
homeless, the world watched in dumbfounded admiration as ordinary citi-
zens maintained social order and reached out to support one another (see
Hunter, 2011).
Among the first to volunteer was the Japanese youth. High schools, uni-
versities, and aid agencies such as Youth for 3.11 (http://youthfor311.jimdo.
com/) helped to inspire and organize students and working and nonwork-
ing young adults (The Japan Times Online, March 27, 2011). The volunteer
organizations helped to communicate to youth what the victims needed.
Marginalized Japanese Youth 229

In Japan, student volunteering is undervalued by employers and univer-


sity admissions offices, and unlike other countries, Japan does not have an
infrastructure of religious organizations promoting the idea of volunteering
as a moral virtue. Yet, even during the 1995 Kobe earthquake, approximately
620,000 youth volunteers stepped up during the first month of the disas-
ter (Sankei News, 2011). Prior to 1995, the concept of volunteerism hardly
existed in Japan because the Social Service Law had put charity and philan-
thropy under the strict control of the state. Thus, 1995 came to be known as
“Year One of Volunteerism” in Japan (Tatsuki, 2000). In 2011, the number
of youth volunteers during the first month of the disaster was approximately
104,000 (Sankei News, 2011). Although this number is about one-sixth of
that in the 1995 Kobe earthquake, probably because of fear of exposure to
radiation emanating from the Fukushima nuclear power plants, the volun-
teers of 2011 were more organized this time, in part, because of Japanese
social network websites like Mixi that was used to communicate with fellow
volunteers in the affected regions to streamline the recovery effort.
Given the lack of material incentive, why are so many Japanese youth
drawn to volunteering, especially in times of national crisis? Testimonials
from the volunteers suggest that when local and national governments are
insufficient, the opportunity for youth to help shape the future of the coun-
try opens up. Volunteering is also an opportunity for youth to feel more
connected with others.
When John Burnett (2011), a reporter for National Public Radio, inter-
viewed youth volunteers in northeastern Japan, he was met with the follow-
ing responses. “I thought it would be cool, because we’re all Japanese, that’s
why I came,” said a 25-year-old art student. Futoshi Sato, a resident of the
port city of Sendai said, “Here in Miyagi prefecture, people used Mixi to ask
the victims who live in the tsunami-hit cities of Ishinomaki and Kesennuma
how people could help them and what they needed and they told us how
they wanted us to help.”
Laura Gottesdiener (2011), a reporter for Huffington Post, recorded sim-
ilar testimonials. Akiko Karako, a university student volunteer from Tokyo
said, “Students are enthusiastically trying to organize volunteer groups and
build connections between places and organizations, and those are things
worth respecting from the adults’ viewpoint.” Also, when Kentaro Watari,
one of the organizers of Youth for 3.11, was asked why a group of univer-
sity student volunteers from Tokyo at the scene of devastation was crying,
he said, “…because they’ve never been [in] such a good team…Youth for
3.11’s number one vision is to do the best we can for the relief victims, but
our secondary mission is to create a student movement that will change
230 Norasakkunkit and Uchida

volunteering and youth in Japan. Our generation has been hated on by a lot
of society, and I think that after the earthquake students have woken up and
realized there’s more to life, that we can make a big difference.”
Volunteering also came up when we visited a youth support agency
that helped us obtain data from recovering hikikomori clients for our
studies previously discussed (Norasakkunkit & Uchida, 2011; Uchida &
Norasakkunkit, 2010; Uchida et al., 2010). In a meeting for the parents of
hikikomori, one fully recovered hikikomori came up front to talk about his
experience. When he was asked what experience most impacted him dur-
ing his recovery, he talked about his volunteering experience. “I didn’t feel
any pressure. Yet, when I volunteered, I felt that people were appreciative of
me. I felt needed,” he said. “I think that’s when I started to feel good about
working.”
Although it is too soon to tell how volunteering will be shaped by the
crisis currently unfolding in Japan, we believe that one of the important
lessons that can be learned from the impact of the March 11, 2011 natural
disaster and from youth volunteers in Japan is that many Japanese youth
are not seeking to be left alone by the older generation. Instead, the val-
ues that changed the most as a result of the disaster and their motivations
to volunteer suggest that they seek connection from a position of mutual
respect, self-fulfillment, and even mutual sacrifice, not from a position of
low status, self-denial, and disempowerment. Although Western pop cul-
ture has no doubt influenced the values of Japanese youth, it is unlikely that
Japanese youth want to fully embrace American-style rugged individualism
with its emphasis on self-reliance and independence. Rather, they appear to
be seeking a more compassionate and egalitarian kind of interdependence
where the self also has some room to be expressed and where their post-
materialist values can have a place to live and breathe. If the youth of Japan
are allowed to negotiate a role in shaping such a future, the pervasiveness
of youth problems such as NEETs, hikikomoris, and teenage suicide may
finally be a thing of the past.

References

Arnett, J. J. (2004). Emerging adulthood: The winding road from the late teens through the
twenties. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brinton, M. (2011). Lost in transition: Youth, work, and instability in postindustrial Japan.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Experiments by nature
and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Marginalized Japanese Youth 231

Burnett, J. (2011, April 12). Japanese youth step up in earthquake aftermath. Retrieved
May 30, 2011, from http://www.npr.org/2011/04/12/135348165/japanese-youth-
step-up-in-earthquake-aftermath.
Cabinet Office, Government of Japan (2009). Hikikomori ni kansuru jittai chosa [An
investigation of the nature of hikikomori]. Retrieved from http://www8.cao.go.jp/
youth/kenkyu/hikikomori/pdf_index.html.
Chow, P., & Bhandari, R. (2011). Open doors 2011 report on International Educational
Exchange. New York: Institute of International Education. Retrieved May 12, 2011
from http://www.iie.org/opendoors.
DfEE (2001). Transforming youth work. Department for Education and Employment
[in the UK].
Fiske, A. P., Kitayama, S., Markus, H. R., & Nisbett, R. E. (1998). The cultural matrix of
social psychology. In D. Gilbert, S. Fiske, & G. Linzey (Eds.), Handbook of social
psychology (pp. 915–981). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Genda, Y. (2005). A nagging sense of job insecurity: The new reality facing Japanese youth.
Tokyo: International House of Japan, Inc.
Giorgi, L., & Marsh, C. (1990). The Protestant work ethic as a cultural phenomenon.
European Journal of Social Psychology, 20, 499–517.
Gottesdiener, L. (2011, April 7). Japan’s youth build generations’ identity in time of cri-
sis. Retrieved May 30, 2011, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/07/
japan-earthquake-tsunami-youth_n_846178.html.
Hamamura, T., Meijer, Z., Heine, S. J., Kamaya, K., & Hori, I. (2009) Approach-avoidance
motivations and information processing: A cross-cultural analysis. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 454–462.
Hayward, R. D., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2007). How competition is viewed across cultures:
A test of four theories. Cross-Cultural Research, 41, 364–395.
Heine, S. J., Kitayama, S., Lehman, D. R., Takata, T., Ide, E., Leung, C., & Matsumoto, H.
(2001). Divergent consequences of success and failure in Japan and North America.
An investigation of self-improving motivations and malleable selves. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 599–615.
Hunter, M. (2011, March 12). Orderly disaster reaction in line with deep cultural roots.
Retrieved May 30, 2011, from http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/12/orderly-
disaster-reaction-in-line-with-deep-cultural-roots/.
Inglehart, R. (1977). The silent revolution: Changing values and political styles among
Western publics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  (2008). Changing values among Western publics from 1970 to 2006. West European
Politics, 31, 130–146.
Kamata, T. (2000). Ethos of edge (Oudouron vol.3): Edge no shisou waraberon: Initiation
naki jidai wo ikinukutameni [The guide to survive the modern era without an initi-
ation process]. Tokyo: Shinyousha.
Kameda, T., & Inukai, K. (under review). Emotional functioning, socio-economic uncer-
tainty, and cultural pathology: An investigation of the impact of SES on momen-
tary and elicited emotion.
Kariya, T. (2011). Credential inflation and employment in ‘universal’ higher educa-
tion: Enrollment, expansion and (in)equity via privatisation in Japan. Journal of
Education and Work, 24 (1–2), 69–94.
232 Norasakkunkit and Uchida

Kitayama, S., Mesquita, B., & Karasawa, M. (2006). Cultural affordances and emotional
experience: Socially engaging and disengaging emotions in Japan and the United
States. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(5), 890–903.
Kosugi, R. (2008). Escape from work: Freelancing youth and challenge to corporate Japan.
Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.
Koyama, A., Miyake, Y., Kawakami, N., Tsuchiya, M., Tachimori, H., & Takeshima, T.
(2010). Lifetime prevalence, psychiatric comorbidity and demographic correlates
of “hikikomori” in a community population in Japan. Psychiatry Research, 176,
69–74.
Lehman, J. P. (2002, April 22). Gerontocracy and its perks sap resources. Retrieved May
22, 2011, from http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20020422jl.html.
Mainichi News (2010, April 27). More Japanese children lack motivation, value inner
happiness. Retrieved May 20, 2010 from http://mdn.mainichi.jp/features/
news/20100426p2a00m0na006000c.html.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for
­cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253.
doi:10.1037/0033–295X.98.2.224
Masuda, T., & Nisbett, R. E. (2001). Attending holistically vs. analytically: Comparing
the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 81, 922–934.
Mathews, G. (2004). Seeking a career, finding a job: How young people enter and resist
the Japanese world of work. In G. Mathews & B. White (Eds.), Japan’s changing
generations (pp. 69–93). New York: Guilford Press.
Matsumoto, D. (2002). The new Japan: Debunking seven cultural stereotypes. Yarmouth,
ME: Intercultural Press.
McClelland, D. (1961). The achieving society. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.
Moore, J. C. (2009, July 28). Students giving up dream majors for practical pick. Retrieved
May 12, 2011, from http://www.vcstar.com/news/2009/jul/28/local-students-
forgo-dream-majors-in-hopes-of-a/.
Norasakkunkit, V. (2007, July). Pictorial versus verbal priming: Standardizing an experi-
mental priming procedure in the United States and Japan. Paper presented at the 7th
Biennial Conference of the Asian Association of Social Psychology, Kota Kinabalu,
Malaysia.
Norasakkunkit, V., & Uchida, Y. (2011). Psychological consequences of post-industrial
anomie on self and motivation among Japanese youth. Journal of Social Issues,
67(4), 774–786.
OECD Stat (2009). Country statistical profiles. Retrieved from http://stats.oecd.org/
Index.aspx?DataSetCode=CSP2009.
Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individual-
ism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses.
Psychological Bulletin, 128(1), 3–72.
Quinn, D. M., & Crocker, J. (1999). When ideology hurts: Effects of feeling fat and the
Protestant ethic on the psychological well-being of women. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 77, 402–414.
Saito, T. (1998). Shakaiteki hikikomori: Owaranai shishunki [Social withdrawal: Unending
adolescence]. Tokyo: PHP Shuppan.
Marginalized Japanese Youth 233

Sakai, M., Horikawa, H., Nonaka, S., Matsumoto, M., & Hirakawa, S. (2011). Research
report on the nature of hikikomori. Proceedings of the KHJ Parents’ Association
Meeting.
Sanchez-Burks, J. (2002). Protestant relational ideology and (in) attention to relational
cues in work settings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 919–929.
Sankei News (2011, April 26). The number of volunteers at the disaster site sharply decrease
compared with the Hanshin Great Earthquake. Retrieved May 30, 2011 from http://
sankei.jp.msn.com/life/news/110426/trd11042607400003-n1.htm.
Sato, Y. (2010). Japan’s traditional seniority system fading as new disparities emerge.
Retrieved May 30, 2011, from http://www.fgl.tohoku.ac.jp/rsch/05/tpc01.shtml.
Singelis, T. M. (1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-con-
struals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(5), 580–591.
Statistics Bureau (2011). Labor force survey (long term time series data). Tokyo: Ministry
of Internal Affairs and Communications, the Government of Japan. URL: http://
www.estat.go.jp/SG1/estat/List.do?bid=000001007702&cycode=0 (accessed May
5, 2011).
Tatsuki, S. (2000). The Kobe earthquake and the renaissance of volunteerism in
Japan. Journal of Kwansei Gakuin University Department of Sociology Studies, 87,
185–196.
The Japan Times Online (2011, March 27). The young volunteers. Retrieved May 30, 2011
from http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20110327a2.html.
Trzesniewski, K. H., & Donnellan, M. B. (2010). Rethinking “Generation Me”: A study
of cohort effects from 1976–2006. Perspective in Psychological Science, 5(1), 58–75.
Uchida, Y. (2002). Culture and implicit self-construals. Paper presented at the International
Symposium on the Socio-Cultural Foundations of Cognition, Kyoto University,
Kyoto, Japan.
Uchida, Y., & Norasakkunkit, V. (2011). Hikikomori/NEET keikou to taijinkankei no
kentou [The NEET Risk Factor Scale and special considerations to interpersonal
factors]. Manuscript in prep.
Uchida, Y., Norasakkunkit, V., Kishimoto, S., Fujiwara, M., Kondo, M., & Morisaki, S.
(December 18, 2010). Seinenki no shakaiteki tekiyou: hikikomori/NEET no bunkash-
inrigakuteki kentou [The social adaptation of youth: Considerations from a cultural
psychological perspective]. The Kokoro Research Center Convention on Research
Findings (2010). Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Uchida, Y., Park, J., & Kitayama, S. (2008, February). Explicit and implicit social orienta-
tions: Independence and interdependence in Japan and the U.S. Paper presented at
the 9th Annual Conference of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology,
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Uchida, Y., Takahashi, Y., & Kawahara, K. (2011). Higashi nihon daishinsai chokugo no
jakunen sou no seikatsu koudo oyobi koufukudo ni kansuru eikyou [The immedi-
ate effects of the great earthquake of eastern Japan on the lifestyle and happiness of
youth]. Working paper of the Economic and Social Research Institute. Cabinet Office
of the Japanese Government.
Wagatsuma, H. (1983). Encyclopedia of Japan 3. Tokyo: Kodansha.
Weber, M. (1904/1930). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York: The
Citadel Press.
234 Norasakkunkit and Uchida

Yamada, M. (1999). Parasaito shinguru no jidai [The age of parasite singles]. Tokyo:
Chikuma Shobo.
Yamagishi, T. (1999). Trust and social intelligence. Genetics, 11, 158–165. (In Japanese)
Zielenziger, M. (2006). Shutting out the sun: How Japan created its own lost generation.
New York: Nan A. Talese.
  (in press). In T. Kawai & Y. Uchida (Eds.). Hikikomori-ko. Kyoto: Sogensha.
10 Adolescent Cultural Values and Adjustment
in the Changing Chinese Society

Xinyin Chen, Li Wang, and Junsheng Liu

Abstract
Over the past two decades, China has been changing dramatically toward a
market-oriented society, particularly in urban areas, which may undermine
the traditional cultural and religious systems. Individualistic ideologies
and values are required for adjustment and success in the new compet-
itive environment and are increasingly appreciated by individuals, espe-
cially in the young generations. This chapter focuses on cultural values and
their relations with adjustment in Chinese youth from urban, rural, and
rural-to-urban migrant backgrounds. There is emerging evidence suggest-
ing differences between the urban and rural adolescents in their cultural
values. Whereas group orientation and social connectedness continue to
be valued among rural and urban adolescents, urban adolescents are more
likely than their rural counterparts to appreciate and approve the expres-
sion of personal distinctiveness and develop a “unitary and stable” self that
is separate from social context. Moreover, among urban, but not rural or
migrant, adolescents, values of uniqueness have become important for the
development of social status in the peer group and school achievement. As
a future direction, it will be interesting to explore how adolescents in China
integrate diverse values in their adaptation to the changing sociocultural
context.

How macro-level societal changes affect the socioemotional and cognitive


functioning of children and adolescents is an important issue in develop-
mental science (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Elder & Shanahan, 2006;
Silbereisen, 2005). Research findings have indicated considerable implica-
tions of social, economic, and cultural changes for human development
during modernization in traditionally rural societies (e.g., Kagitcibasi &
Ataca, 2005) and in the Great Depression in the 1930s in the United States

235
236 Chen, Wang, and Liu

(Elder 1974). Recent studies (e.g., Silbereisen, 2005) have also revealed
that sociopolitical changes in Eastern European nations after the fall of the
Berlin Wall have pervasive effects on the relationships, behaviors, and life
adjustment of youth.
Researchers who study social change and human development are often
interested in individual cultural values (e.g., Silbereisen, 2005). Value sys-
tems are highly susceptible to the influence of environmental change and,
at the same time, serve as a guideline for interpersonal interaction and
individual functioning. Kagitcibasi and Ataca (2005), for example, found
that the cultural values of Turkish parents changed over the past three
decades as a result of the transformation of the society. Turkish parents
in 2003, particularly in high socioeconomic status urban families, valued
autonomy and independence more than those in 1975. The urbanization
and socioeconomic development were associated with a decline in mate-
rial dependence within the family and an increase in positive attitudes
toward children’s independent and exploratory behaviors. Similar findings
concerning changes in cultural values of independence and individuality
have been reported in other societies such as Maya communities in Mexico
and Guatemala (e.g., Greenfield, Maynard, & Childs, 2000) and Germany
(Eickhorst, Lamm, Borke, & Keller, 2008; Keller & Lamm, 2005).

The Economic Reform, Social Change, Regional Differences, and


Internal Migration in China
China has been a primarily agrarian society for thousands of years, with
most people living under adverse conditions during most periods of its his-
tory. The economy was poor in the nineteenth and the most of the twenti-
eth centuries. After the Communists took power in 1949, the government
installed a centrally planned economy, which eventually resulted in a drop
in living standards. Since the early 1980s, China has carried out a large-
scale economic reform, moving toward a market-oriented society. The
main goal of the reform is to transform the planned economy dominated
by state-owned enterprises to one that is increasingly market-oriented and
inclusive of state and private enterprises. The initial phase of the reform was
the “internal vitalization” in rural areas and the “open-the-door” movement
in some southern regions. The reform was expanded to cities and other
parts of the country in the early 1990s. The rapid expansion of the market
systems to various sectors has led to major changes in economic and social
structures in the country. Consequently, there are substantial increases in
individual and family income and its variation, massive movement of the
Adolescent Cultural Values and Adjustment 237

population, decline in the government control of social welfare and protec-


tion, and rapid rise in unemployment and competition (e.g., Chen & Chen,
2010; Zhang, 2000).
The economy in China is currently one of the largest in the world and
growing at the rate of approximately 10 percent a year. According to the
National Bureau of Statistics of China (Bulletin, 2010), in comparison to
the 1949 annual per capita income of 100 and 50 Yuan for urban and rural
areas, respectively, the annual per capita income was 10,493 and 17,175
Yuan (approx. US$1,312 and $2,450) for urban residents and 3,255 and
5,153 Yuan (approx. US$406 and $736) for rural residents in 2005 and 2009,
respectively. A major feature of the economic reform is to break the “iron
rice bowl” in jobs with guaranteed security and steady income and benefits
in the traditional command economy. According to Zheng and Yang (2009),
private enterprises have continuously increased in number at the rate of
more than 30 percent since 1992 and contributed to one-third of GDP and
four-fifths of new employment in recent years. As a result, many people
choose, or are forced, to “jump into the sea” by entering self-employment
or private sectors where they face a higher risk in job security and greater
work autonomy.
As an important aspect of social change, Western technologies have
been imported into the country along with efficient management in econ-
omy, which has gradually affected social, educational, and other daily life
activities of Chinese people. High-technology products such as computer,
Internet, and electronics such as cell phones/mobile devices, digital cameras
and camcorders are now popular in cities and towns in China. In Beijing,
for example, over 70 percent of families possess a computer, and most peo-
ple report that they use the Internet to obtain information, chat, play games,
read news, and receive and sending emails (Yi & Yu, 2003). Although the
exposure to high technology is a common experience of adults and adoles-
cents in many other contemporary societies, this experience is related to the
“open-the-door” policy in China, which may have particular implications
for the development of Chinese adolescents.
There are substantial regional, particularly urban and rural, differences
in social and economic developments within China. The massive social and
economic reform such as the opening of stock markets in China has been
largely limited to urban centers and cities, although the reform started in
rural areas in the early 1980s. Families in rural China have lived mostly
agricultural lives, and rural adolescents, accounting for approximately 60
percent of the adolescents in the country, do not have as much exposure as
238 Chen, Wang, and Liu

their urban counterparts to the influence of the dramatic social transforma-


tion (Huang & Du, 2007; Li, 2006). China’s policies and development strat-
egies have created huge gaps between rural and urban populations in many
aspects of life including health care conditions, educational opportunities,
and income levels (Yang & Zhou, 1999). Rural population is generally at a
disadvantage in these aspects.
A significant phenomenon related to urban-rural differences in China
is internal migration. Since the early 1990s, the Chinese government has
relaxed the enforcement of migration restriction and allowed cities to
absorb surplus rural labor. As a result, millions of rural people have moved
to cities to seek opportunities. With relatively limited education, most rural-
to-urban migrants become unskilled workers in the city in such sectors as
manual labor (e.g., manufacturing, cleaning streets, transporting goods),
construction, and commerce (e.g., street peddlers, small vendors). Many
rural migrant workers have brought their families including children to the
cities. In 2005, approximately 20 million school-age rural children lived in
cities with their parents (Nielsen, Nyland, Nyland, Smyth, & Zhang, 2005).
Rural migrant families often stay in the city for years while maintaining
links to their villages of origin (e.g., Wang, 2004). Under the hukou system
of household registration, migrant children do not have an urban registra-
tion and thus do not have the same privileges as urban children. Many rural
children are unable to enter public city schools because of various obstacles
such as extra fees they have to pay. To address the problem, the munici-
pal government and the migrant community within major cities such as
Beijing and Shanghai have set up migrant children schools.

Cultural and Religious Backgrounds and Changes of Values


Traditional Chinese society is relatively homogenous in its cultural back-
ground, with Confucianism serving as a predominant ideological guide-
line for social activities. Confucius (551–479 B.C.) believed that, to achieve
and maintain social order, it is important to establish a set of moral and
social standards to guide interpersonal interactions and individual behav-
iors in daily life. The highest social-moral standards in the Confucian sys-
tem include 仁 or ren (benevolence, humanity), 义 or yi (righteousness),
礼 or li (propriety, proper conduct), 智 or zhi (wisdom and knowledge),
and 信 or xin (trustworthiness). To reach these standards, individuals in
different roles should follow specific social rules such as 孝 or Xiao (filial
piety) that stipulates that children must pledge obedience and reverence
to parents. Confucianism provides a hierarchical, holistic cultural frame-
work that emphasizes the control of individual desires and behaviors for the
Adolescent Cultural Values and Adjustment 239

well-being of the collective; the expression of individual needs or striving


for autonomous behaviors is considered socially unacceptable. Confucian
principles concerning individual behaviors and relationships have been
adopted by most rulers of the country in its history and have had a remark-
able influence on socialization and human development in China.
Taoism is another indigenous belief and religious system in China that
has significantly influenced the values of the Chinese people. Similar to
Confucianism, Taoism emphasizes connections among different external
and internal conditions of human functioning from a holistic perspective.
According to Taoist philosophy, human beings live between heaven and
earth (i.e., macrocosm) and comprise a miniature universe within them-
selves (i.e., microcosm). Maintaining harmony between the macrocosms
and the microcosms is critical to healthy individual development. Unlike
Confucianism, Taoism advocates extremely passive attitudes and behaviors
in daily life activities to pursue internal peace and well-being. It is believed
that pursuing external material possessions leads to desires and confu-
sions, which cause internal emotional disturbances. Softness, tenderness,
and weakness are the desirable attributes of life, whereas firmness, strength,
and stiffness are undesirable concomitants of death. Human beings should
remain flexible and take “no action” in dealing with challenges and adver-
sities (Wang, 2006). Another major difference between Confucianism and
Taoism is that whereas the former is largely a philosophical system, the
latter is a mixture of philosophy and religion. Like many religions, religious
Taoism includes a variety of practices. There are Taoist temples, monas-
teries, priests, rituals, and a number of gods and goddesses for believers to
worship. Taoist beliefs are reflected in many aspects of the lives of Chinese
people such as politics, medicine, calligraphy, and poetry. Taoist believers
in China often engage in activities such as physical cultivation (e.g., Tai Chi
exercise) and contemplation that are developed based on Taoist beliefs.
It is important to note that Chinese society is not homogeneous in
beliefs and values concerning human behavior and development, despite
the dominance of Confucianism and popularity of Taoism in the traditional
Chinese culture. Although Confucian values generally emphasize the sup-
pression and restraint of personal desires for social harmony, for example,
some Confucian scholars such as Mencius discussed the role of individual
active attitudes in self-cultivation and character development (Yu, 2004).
Within the holistic and naturalistic framework, Taoism advocates avoid-
ing and resisting social constraints including the influence of social-moral
standards and group norms and the control of the authority. The primary
proponents of Taoism, Laotze and Zhuangtze, endorsed the rebellion of
240 Chen, Wang, and Liu

social and political order of the society and even encouraged the pursuit
of personal freedom, although the notion of individuality in Taoism has
not been generally recognized in Chinese culture (Yu, 2004). This may be
illustrated in Zhuangtze’s teaching, “Going back and forth between heaven
and earth and moving freely around the world without being hindered by
others are called ‘du you’ (keeping something to self, uniqueness). A person
with the quality of ‘du you’ is a noble person.” (Zhuangtze, 2006; p. 99).
Moreover, the Chinese society has been changing since early in the last
century when Western ideologies were introduced into the country (Yu,
2004). This change has accelerated over the past three decades as a result
of the economic reform in China. Many traditional Chinese cultural val-
ues are incompatible with the requirements of the market-oriented society
that emphasizes individual initiative, active exploration, and competitive-
ness. To function adequately and obtain success in the new environment,
individuals need to learn skills that help them behave in an independent
and assertive manner (Chen & Chen, 2010). In a recent study, Liu et al.
(2005) found in an observational study of parent–child interactions that
Canadian parents had relatively higher scores on the encouragement of
autonomy/individuality whereas Chinese parents had relatively higher
scores on encouragement of connectedness. However, within the Chinese
sample, there was a substantial individual variability on both autonomy-
and connectedness-oriented parenting behaviors. Indeed, like Canadian
parents, Chinese parents had higher scores on encouragement of autonomy
than on encouragement of connectedness. In both Chinese and Canadian
samples, parental encouragement of autonomy was associated with child
autonomous behavior whereas parental connectedness was associated with
child connectedness and affiliative behavior.
Of particular relevance to adolescent development are the significant
changes in educational policies and practices in Chinese schools. As required
in the “Outline of the educational reform” established by the Ministry of
Education of (Yu, 2002), many schools have expanded the goals of educa-
tion to include helping children develop social and behavioral qualities that
are required for adaptation in the competitive society. Whereas academic
achievement continues to be emphasized, children are also encouraged to
develop social skills such as expression of personal opinions, self-direction
and self-confidence, which have traditionally been neglected in Chinese
culture (Yu, 2002). A variety of strategies (e.g., encouraging students to
engage in public debate and to plan and organize their own extracurricular
activities) has been used to facilitate the development of these skills. The
emphasis on individuality and self-expression in education and other social
Adolescent Cultural Values and Adjustment 241

activities, particularly in urban schools, is likely to have implications for the


development of values in Chinese adolescents.
Zhang and Zhao (2006) conducted a study in an urban area of China
to compare the values of high school students and their parents. A large
random sample of students in several high schools and their parents com-
pleted a self-report questionnaire assessing values in multiple domains such
as family responsibility, independence, equality, personal privacy, interper-
sonal relationships, pursuit of modern lifestyle, maintenance of tradition,
learning, and self-orientation. The results indicated that students were
more likely than parents to value self-orientation, independence, personal
privacy, social interaction, and interpersonal equality. In contrast, parents
were more likely than students to endorse values of family responsibility,
harmoneous family atmosphere, knowledge, and tradition. These results
indicate different values of two generations of people in China, although
various factors such as age and role of parent versus child may be related to
the differences in values.
The implications of social change may be illustrated by different per-
ceptions and evaluations of shy, wary, and restrained behavior in urban
Chinese children and adolescents at different historical times (Chen &
Chen, 2010; Hart et al., 2000). Despite its potential detrimental effects on
self-expression and active social participation, shy and restrained behav-
ior has been traditionally valued and encouraged in China because it is
believed to indicate social maturity and understanding (Chen, Rubin, &
Li, 1995). However, this behavior is viewed by adolescents in urban areas
as increasingly maladaptive and deviant; it is associated with more neg-
ative social evaluations and has become a more undesirable characteris-
tic in social and psychological adjustment in recent years. Specifically,
Chen, Cen, Li, and He (2005) explored how shyness was associated with
peer attitudes in three cohorts (1990, 1998, and 2002) in Shanghai, China.
Whereas people in the early 1990s experienced relatively limited influence
from the comprehensive reform and people in early 2000s were socialized
in an increased self-oriented cultural context, the 1998 cohort represented
an intermediate phase in which individuals might have mixed socializa-
tion experiences. The study revealed significant cross-cohort differences in
the relations between shyness and social attitudes and reactions. Whereas
shyness was positively associated with peer acceptance and leadership in
the 1990 cohort, it was positively associated with peer rejection and nega-
tive self-feelings such as loneliness and depression in the 2002 cohort. The
patterns of the relations between shyness and peer evaluations and adjust-
ment variables were nonsignificant or mixed in the 1998 cohort. The results
242 Chen, Wang, and Liu

showed that by the early part of the twenty-first century as cities in China
became more deeply immersed in a market economy, shy children, unlike
their counterparts in the early 1990s, were perceived as incompetent and
problematic and thus rejected by peers and displayed adjustment problems.
Similar results were reported in samples of high school students in China
(Liu, Chen, Li, & French, in press).
It has been argued that whereas individuality and independence are
increasingly valued, group orientation and social connectedness may not
necessarily be discouraged or weakened in China (Yang, 1986). According
to this argument, during the transition to modernization, some traditional
values, especially those with vigorous cultural roots, may be maintained
and manifested in the social lives of Chinese people. As a core aspect of
Confucian holistic philosophy and contemporary collectivistic ideologies,
group orientation is likely to display its robustness in the context of social
change and continue to affect social interaction and individual functioning
in Chinese adults and children (Oyserman Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002;
Triandis, 1995).

Cultural Values of Urban, Rural, and Migrant Adolescents


Traditional Chinese values such as group harmony and self-control are more
highly emphasized in interpersonal interaction in rural than urban areas of
China (Fuligni & Zhang, 2004; Shen, 2006; Sun, 2006). For example, parents
in rural families are more likely than parents in urban families to maintain
socialization goals and use childrearing practices that are consistent with the
traditional beliefs such as filial piety and self-sacrifice for the family (e.g.,
China Youth & Children Research Center, 2007; Shen, 2006). Corresponding
to the urban-rural variation in socialization expectations and practices, urban
and rural adolescents have been found to differ in their values and attitudes
with regard to group and individual interests (e.g., Sun, 2006). In general,
relative to their urban counterparts, rural youth are more concerned about
group or collective well-being, display greater social responsibility, and are
less likely to pursue individual interests (Guo, Yao, & Yang, 2005).
We recently conducted a study of cultural values and adjustment in
Chinese youth of different backgrounds. In the study, we focused on two
main categories of values, individuality and social affiliation. Individuality,
including personal assertiveness and uniqueness, is concerned with the
expression of one’s views and behavioral styles and the display of distinctive-
ness of oneself from others. In contrast, social affiliation, including group
orientation and interpersonal connectedness, mainly taps into a sense of
belonging and fitting in and intertwining with social context.
Adolescent Cultural Values and Adjustment 243

In the study, we collected data on cultural values through self-reports


from urban (n = 1097), rural (n = 569), and migrant (n = 296) children and
adolescents in grades four to six, aged 10 and 12 years, in China. The par-
ticipants in the urban and migrant groups were students in city schools and
rural migrant children schools in Beijing. The migrant children schools were
set up by the Beijing government in the communities of the rural migrant
families. Students in these schools came to Beijing from different provinces
of the country. The participants in the rural group were students in schools
in a Northern region near Beijing. Four major domains of cultural values,
individual assertiveness (e.g., “I like to express my own opinions,” “I rely on
myself most of time, rarely rely on others”), uniqueness (e.g., “I enjoy being
unique and different from others in many respects,” “I like to behave in my
own way”), group orientation (e.g., “It is important to me to respect deci-
sions made by the group,” “I will sacrifice my self-interest for the benefit of
the group I am in”), and social connectedness (e.g., “It is important to get
along with others,” “To me, pleasure is spending time with others”) were
assessed, using a measure adapted from Singelis (1994).
The means and standard deviations for boys and girls in each group
are presented in Table 10.1. The results first indicated that urban students
had higher scores than rural students on uniqueness. Displaying personal
unique and distinct characteristics and behaviors is clearly incompatible
with the collectivistic orientation and has been traditionally discouraged
in Chinese society. As urban China becomes increasingly market-oriented,
modernized, and Westernized, however, children and adolescents start to
appreciate the values of personal uniqueness and attempt to behave in a
distinct manner.
Relative to urban and rural students, migrant students had lower scores
on all cultural values. The lower scores on group orientation and social con-
nectedness might be because of the fact that migrant students did not form
stable peer groups and social relationships because their families tended
to move frequently from one place to another. On the other hand, their
rural background and experiences of difficulties such as prejudice and dis-
crimination of urban residents related to their undesirable status (e.g., Sun,
2006; Zhan, Sun, & Dong, 2005) might make migrant students anxious
about displaying self-directive and unique behaviors. It has been argued
(e.g., Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006) that migrants are likely to expe-
rience various acculturation processes including maintaining values of ori-
gin, acquiescing to requirements in the new environment, and integrating
diverse values. The results from our study suggest that mixed backgrounds
of migrant students in China may lead to a lack of endorsement of either
244 Chen, Wang, and Liu

Table 10.1.  Means and Standard Deviations of Values in Urban, Rural, and Migrant
Groups

Urban Rural Migrant

Boys Girls Total Boys Girls Total Boys Girls Total

n=544 n=553 n=1097 n=296 n=273 n=569 n=168 n=127 n=295


Individual 3.87 3.84 3.86 3.75 3.83 3.79 3.34 3.43 3.38
assertiveness (.89) (.76) (.83) (.77) (.78) (.77) (.77) (.78) (.78)
Uniqueness 3.91 3.99 3.95 3.55 3.48 3.52 3.20 3.33 3.24
(.83) (.69) (.76) (.78) (.79) (.78) (.80) (.76) (.78)
Group 4.05 4.17 4.11 3.90 4.06 3.98 3.64 3.87 3.74
orientation (.83) (.67) (.75) (.80) (.71) (.76) (.85) (.75) (.82)
Social 3.96 3.93 3.96 3.92 3.90 3.91 3.55 3.64 3.59
connectedness (.82) (.77) (.80) (.87) (.77) (.82) (.87) (.80) (.84)

Note:  SDs are in parentheses under M scores.

traditional group-oriented values or urban individualistic values. It will be


an interesting question whether migrant adolescents gradually accept val-
ues of individual assertiveness and uniqueness as they become more accul-
turated in the urban environment.

Cultural Values and Adjustment among Urban, Rural,


and Migrant Adolescents
Do cultural values mean anything in adolescent social, school, and psycho-
logical adjustment? Are they associated with social relationships, behaviors,
school performance, and psychological well-being in adolescents? These
are interesting and important questions for developmental researchers, but
unfortunately, have been largely neglected in empirical research. According
to the pluralist perspective (Garcia Coll et al., 1996; Hong, Morris, Chiu, &
Benet-Martinez, 2000; Zhou, 1997), different beliefs and values may serve
different, perhaps complementary, functions in human development. For
example, whereas individuality may be conducive to the acquisition of
social status and school achievement (achieving personal goals in social
and academic areas), group orientation may play a greater role in establish-
ing social support systems and positive social relationship, which in turn
may help psycho-emotional adjustment.
The functional significance of cultural values may also depend on spe-
cific context. For example, values of initiative-taking, independence, and
Adolescent Cultural Values and Adjustment 245

self-expression may be particularly beneficial for adolescents to acquire


leadership, social status, and achievement in urban Chinese schools where
students are encouraged to engage in self-directed and exploratory activ-
ities. The emphasis of self-direction and exploration in school activities
may create a favorable atmosphere for students to develop self-confidence
and to display sociable assertive behavior and for students who display
this behavior to acquire social status and success in school performance.
On the other hand, in rural areas where group harmony and interdepen-
dence are strongly encouraged, adolescents with individualistic values
may experience more difficulties in social interaction; as a result, these
adolescents may feel frustrated and develop negative attitudes toward oth-
ers and self. In contrast, adolescents who hold group-oriented values may
follow the social expectations, obtain social approval, or function well
psychologically.
In the “Cultural values and adjustment in Chinese youth” project, we
examined relations between the four values and social, school, and psycho-
logical adjustment. In addition to the information on cultural values, we
collected data on individual adjustment from multiple sources. Specifically,
we administered to the participants a peer assessment measure of social
behaviors and a sociometric nomination measure. The peer-assessments
of social behaviors provided information on individual sociability (e.g.,
“makes new friends easily,” “helps others when they need it,” “polite”) and
aggression (e.g., “gets into a lot of fights,” “picks on other kids”). The mea-
sure of positive and negative sociometric nominations (“Tell us the class-
mates you most like to be with/you would rather not be with”) provided
information on peer acceptance and peer rejection, which formed an index
of peer preference indicating how the participant was liked by others in the
class. We also asked the participants to complete a loneliness measure (e.g.,
“I feel lonely,” “I have nobody to talk to”). Teachers completed a rating scale
for each participant concerning his/her school-related competence (e.g.,
“participates in class discussion,” “copes well with failure”). Finally, data
concerning academic achievement in Chinese language and mathematics
was obtained from school records.
As shown in Table 10.2, the results indicated that individual assertive-
ness was positively associated with sociability, teacher-rated competence,
and academic achievement in both urban and rural groups. Assertiveness
was also positively associated with aggression and negatively associated
with loneliness in all three groups. Uniqueness was positively associated
with peer preference and academic achievement in the urban group, but
246 Chen, Wang, and Liu

Table 10.2.  Effects of Values in Predicting Adjustment Variables in Urban,


Rural, and Migrant Groups Adjustment Variable

Values Urban Rural Migrant


Peer preference
Assertiveness .04 (.08) −.01 (.11) −.11 (.12)
Uniqueness .18 (.08)* .10 (.09) −.14 (.11)
Group orientation −.05 (.09) .25 (.10)* .25 (.13)*
Social connectedness .25 (.08)** .10 (.10) .23 (.12)
Sociability
Assertiveness .35 (.05)*** .22 (.07)*** .14 (.09)
Uniqueness .00 (.05) .09 (.06) −.04 (.08)
Group orientation −.06 (.05) .11 (.07) .08 (.09)
Social connectedness −.01 (.05) −.06 (.06) .22 (.08)**
Aggression
Assertiveness .11 (.05)* .15 (.07)* .23 (.09)**
Uniqueness −.04 (.05) −.07 (.06) .07 (.08)
Group orientation −.06 (.05) −.12 (.07) −.07 (.09)
Social connectedness −.06 (.05) −.06 (.06) −.12 (.08)
Teacher-rated competence
Assertiveness .23 (.05)*** .20 (.07)** .07 (.09)
Uniqueness −.02 (.05) −.03 (.06) −.06 (.08)
Group orientation .00 (.05) .09 (.07) .33 (.09)***
Social connectedness .00 (.05) .04 (.07) −.02 (.08)
Academic achievement
Assertiveness .12 (.05)** .22 (.08)** .06 (.09)
Uniqueness .13 (.05)** .06 (.06) −.11 (.08)
Group orientation −.02 (.05) .19 (.07)** .21 (.09)*
Social connectedness .05 (.05) −.04 (.07) −.02 (.08)
Loneliness
Assertiveness −.22 (.03)*** −.26 (.05)*** −.19 (.06)***
Uniqueness −.02 (.03) .10 (.04)** .14 (.05)**
Group orientation −.07 (.04) −.10 (.04)* −.09 (.06)
Social connectedness −.15 (.03)*** −.13 (.04)** −.18 (.06)**

Note:  SEs are in parentheses after the coefficients.

not in the other two groups. Uniqueness was also positively associated with
loneliness in rural and migrant groups. In contrast, group orientation was
positively associated with peer preferences and academic achievement in
rural and migrant groups, but not in the urban group. Finally, social con-
nectedness was positively associated with peer preference in urban students
and negatively associated with loneliness in all groups.
The associations of individual assertiveness with both sociability and
aggression are rather interesting. The results suggest that regardless of
the background, adolescents who are socially competent and aggressive
Adolescent Cultural Values and Adjustment 247

in China are more likely than others to value assertiveness. These results
are consistent with the argument that sociability and aggression are both
based on a high level of social initiative or a tendency to actively participate
in social interaction (Chen & French, 2008). To display either sociable or
aggressive behavior in social situations, adolescents need to be confident
and motivated to interact with others. Values of assertiveness may be con-
ducive to the development of self-confidence and social interest. The dif-
ferences between social competence and aggression may be derived from
different levels of self-control, the ability to modulate social initiative or
assertiveness. Whereas social assertiveness based on a high level of self-
control may lead to socially competent behavior, the combination of high
assertiveness and low self-control constitutes a basis for the development of
aggressive-disruptive behavior (Chen & French, 2008).
Values of uniqueness and group orientation appeared to be particu-
larly useful in characterizing the differences between the urban and rural
students; uniqueness positively predicted peer preference and academic
achievement in urban students, and group orientation positively predicted
these variables in rural students. More strikingly, uniqueness positively
predicted feelings of loneliness in rural students. The results clearly showed
that values of uniqueness and group orientation have different meanings
in adolescent social and psychological adjustment in urban and rural
regions. Unique personal characteristics and distinct behavioral styles not
only are more appreciated but also play a more important role in shap-
ing social relationships and school performance in urban youth. However,
striving for uniqueness may not fit with the social expectations of confor-
mity, unity, and obedience that are traditionally valued in rural Chinese
society (Chen, 2010). Thus, it is not surprising that adolescents in rural
areas who value uniqueness tend to feel lonely and socially dissatisfied.
Consistent with these arguments, rural adolescents who value group ori-
entation appear to have advantage in obtaining peer support and achieving
school success.
The relations between values and adjustment in migrant students were
largely similar to those in rural students. Like their rural counterparts,
for example, migrant students who valued uniqueness tended to report
higher loneliness than others. Therefore, although migrant students did
not endorse either traditional group-oriented values or urban individ-
ualistic values, the functional meanings of these values in social, school,
and psychological adjustment remained virtually the same as those in the
rural group. This may be because the migrant sample was selected from the
migrant children’s school where almost all students came from rural areas of
248 Chen, Wang, and Liu

the country. These students were raised and socialized mainly in the coun-
tryside. Because of their temporary residence in the city, migrant students
often think of themselves more as members of their hometown than as a
part of the urban population (Sun, 2006; Zhan et al., 2005). The extensive
early experience, continuous influence of the family and the community,
and frequent contact with relatives and peers in the village (e.g., stay in the
hometown for several months each year when the school is closed in the
summer and in the spring holidays) are likely to help rural migrant students
to form a climate in the school in which traditional group-oriented values
are emphasized and used to guide social interactions.

General Issues and Future Directions


The development of individuality and social affiliation is a major task of chil-
dren and adolescents in most societies (e.g., Chen & French, 2008). Young
people need to establish a sense of self as an individual and, at the same
time, connect with others. Moreover, it has been increasingly recognized
that individuality and social relationships are two important aspects of the
integrated self system, which may be associated with various developmental
outcomes (e.g., Kagitcibasi & Ataca, 2005; Tamis-LeMond et al., 2008). It is
a common belief that Chinese culture, particularly Confucianism, empha-
sizes interdependence among individuals and group orientation (Triandis,
1995). Accordingly, the primary goal of socialization in Chinese society is
to help children and adolescents develop attributes that are conducive to
the formation and maintenance of positive interpersonal relationships and
group harmony (Chen, 2010; Ho, 1986; Oyserman et al., 2002). In contrast,
individual autonomy or independence is not highly valued or appreciated
because it may not bear much relevance to group functioning (Greenfield,
Suzuki, & Rothstein-Fisch, 2006). The expression of personal needs or
striving for individual autonomy and distinctiveness, especially when it
threatens the group well-being, is often viewed as anti-collective and thus
unacceptable (Greenfield et al., 2006).
As China is changing toward a market-oriented society and as Western
ideologies are introduced into the country along with high-technologies,
traditional Chinese cultural values become weaker because they are incom-
patible with the requirements of the new competitive environment. In con-
trast, individualistic values such as initiative-taking, active exploration,
and self-expression are more important for achieving success in the soci-
ety. Cumulative research evidence has supported this argument, partic-
ularly about the enhanced awareness of individuality and its significance
for adjustment. The differences between the urban and rural groups on
Adolescent Cultural Values and Adjustment 249

uniqueness in the “Cultural values and adjustment in Chinese youth” pro-


ject suggest that urban adolescents in China have started to appreciate and
approve the expression of personal distinctiveness and develop a “unitary
and stable” self that is separate from social context (Markus & Kitayama,
1991). Moreover, among urban (but not rural or migrant) adolescents, val-
ues of uniqueness contribute to the development of social status in the peer
group and school achievement.
On the other hand, the results from the “Cultural values and adjustment
in Chinese youth” project suggest that, although individual assertiveness
and uniqueness may be increasingly valued, group orientation and social
connectedness are not necessarily weakened in China, even in urban ado-
lescents. As indicated by Yang (1986), group harmony and social affiliation
represent the core of Confucian value system, which has played a crucial role
in shaping the attitudes and behaviors of Chinese people for thousands of
years and thus is likely robust in spite of social change. It is also plausible that
traditional and new values serve different functions in adolescent lives. For
example, whereas individuality helps adolescents achieve personal goals in
social and academic areas, group orientation and social connectedness may
help them develop support systems, which in turn may enhance psychologi-
cal well-being. Adjustment in the new challenging environment is likely to be
stressful and results in negative emotions such as frustration and distress in
Chinese adolescents. Group affiliation may be a protective factor that buffers
against maladaptive emotional development. The results from our project
appear to be consistent with this argument; students who endorsed group
orientation and social connectedness were likely to be accepted by peers and
reported low loneliness in urban, rural, as well as migrant groups.
In this chapter, we focus on traditional values of group affiliation and
relatively new Western values of individuality in adolescents of different
backgrounds. There are many other values such as family responsibility,
self-control, and emotion expression that are associated with social and
psychological adjustment of adolescents in different contexts. In the future,
researchers need to explore these values and their functional meanings in
China. It should also be noted that cultural exchanges and interactions may
lead to the merging and co-existence of diverse value systems (Kagitcibasi
& Ataca, 2005; Tamis-LeMond et al., 2008). The integration of diverse val-
ues may be particularly beneficial for the development of social competence
because maintaining a balance between pursuing own ends and establish-
ing group harmony is important for social interaction. It will be interesting
to investigate how adolescents develop their social competence in the cul-
turally integrated and sophisticated settings.
250 Chen, Wang, and Liu

References

Berry, J. W., Phinney, J. S., Sam, D. L., & Vedder, P. (2006). Immigrant youth in cul-
tural transition: Acculturation, identity, and adaptation across national contexts.
Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. A. (2006). The bioecological model of human devel-
opment. In W. Damon (Series Ed.) & R. M. Lerner (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child
psychology: Vol 1. Theoretical models of human development (pp. 793–828). New
York: Wiley.
Bulletin of China’s Economic and Social Development in 2009 (2010, February, 25). Xin
Hua She, Beijing.
Chen, X. (2010). Socioemotional development in Chinese children. In M. H. Bond (Ed.),
Handbook of Chinese psychology (pp. 37–52). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chen, X., Cen, G., Li, D., & He, Y. (2005). Social functioning and adjustment in Chinese
children: The imprint of historical time. Child Development, 76, 182–195.
Chen, X., & Chen, H. (2010). Children’s social functioning and adjustment in the chang-
ing Chinese society. In R. K. Silbereisen & X. Chen (Eds.), Social change and human
development: Concepts and results (pp. 209–226). London: Sage.
Chen, X., & French, D. (2008). Children’s social competence in cultural context. Annual
Review of Psychology, 59, 591–616.
Chen, X., Rubin, K. H., & Li, Z. (1995). Social functioning and adjustment in Chinese
children: A longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 31, 531–539.
China Youth & Children Research Center (2007). A study of adaption of children of
migrant workers to the urban life. Reports of the China Youth & Children Research
Center, November 16. http://www.cycs.org/Article.asp?Category=1&Column=130
&ID=5809
Eickhorst, A., Lamm, B., Borke, J., & Keller, H. (2008). Fatherhood in different decades:
Interactions between German fathers and their infants in 1977 and 2001. European
Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5, 92–107.
Elder, G. H. Jr. (1974). Children of the Great Depression. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Elder, G. H. Jr., & Shanahan, M. J. (2006). The life course and human development. In W.
Damon (Series Ed.) & R. M. Lerner (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol 1.
Theoretical models of human development (pp. 665–715). New York: Wiley.
Fuligni, A. J., & Zhang, W. X. (2004). Attitudes toward family obligation among
adolescents in contemporary urban and rural China. Child Development, 74,
180–192.
Garcia Coll, C., Crnic, K., Lamberty, G., Wasik, B. H., Jenkins, R., Garcia, H. V., &
McAdoo, H. P. (1996). An integrative model for the study of development compe-
tencies in minority children. Child Development, 67, 1891–1914.
Greenfield, P. M., Maynard, A. E., & Childs, C. P. (2000). History, culture, learning and
development. Cross-Cultural Research, 34, 351–374.
Greenfield, P. M., Suzuki, L. K., & Rothstein-Fisch, C. (2006). Cultural pathways through
human development. In K. A. Renninger & I. E. Sigel (Eds.), Handbook of child psy-
chology: Vol. 4. Child psychology in practice (pp. 655–699). New York: Wiley.
Guo, L., Yao, Y., & Yang, B. (2005). Adaptation of migrant children to the city: A case
study at a migrant children school in Beijing. Youth Study, 3, 22–31.
Adolescent Cultural Values and Adjustment 251

Hart, C. H., Yang, C., Nelson, L. J., Robinson, C. C., Olson, J. A., Nelson, D. A. …
Wu, P. (2000). Peer acceptance in early childhood and subtypes of socially with-
drawn behaviour in China, Russia and the United States. International Journal of
Behavioral Development, 24, 73–81.
Ho, D. Y. F. (1986). Chinese pattern of socialization: A critical review. In M. H. Bond
(Ed.), The psychology of the Chinese people (pp. 1–37). New York: Oxford University
Press.
Hong, Y. Y., Morris, M. W., Chiu, C. Y., & Benet-Martinez, V. (2000). Multicultural
minds: A dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition. American
Psychologist, 55, 709–720.
Huang, A., & Du, X. (2007). Comparative analysis of urban-rural differences of family
education in China. Journal of Yibin University, 1, 107–110.
Kagitcibasi, C., & Ataca, B. (2005). Value of children and family change: A three-decade
portrait from Turkey. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 54, 317–337.
Keller, H., & Lamm, B. (2005). Parenting as the expression of sociohistorical time: The
case of German individualisation. International Journal of Behavioral Development,
29, 238–246.
Li, L. (2006). A study of home education styles in rural areas. Research on Continuing
Education, 2, 95–97.
Liu, J., Chen, X., Li, D., & French, D. (in press). Shyness-sensitivity, aggression, and adjust-
ment in urban Chinese adolescents at different historical times. Journal of Research
on Adolescence.
Liu, M., Chen, X., Rubin, K. H., Zheng, S., Cui, L., Li, D. … Wang, L. (2005). Autonomy-
vs. connectedness-oriented parenting behaviors in Chinese and Canadian moth-
ers. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 29, 489–495.
Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition,
emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.
Nielsen, I., Nyland, B., Nyland, C., Smith, R., & Zhang, M. (2006). Determinants of
school attendance among migrant children: Survey evidence from China’s Jiangsu
province. Pacific Economic Review, 11, 461–476.
Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individual-
ism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses.
Psychological Bulletin, 128, 3–72.
Shen, R. (2006). Problems and solutions for child education for migrant rural worker fam-
ilies. Journal of China Agricultural University (Social Science Edition), 64, 96–100.
Silbereisen, R. K. (2005). Social change and human development: Experiences from
German unification. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 29, 2–13.
Singelis, T. M. (1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-con-
struals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 580–591.
Sun, H. (2006). About the social adaptation of children of migrant workers in the city.
Reports of the China Youth & Children Research Center, December 2. http://www.
cycrc.org/cnarticle_detail.asp?id=1421
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Way, N., Hughes, D., Yoshikawa, H., Kalman, R. K., & Niwa, E.
(2008). Parents’ goals for children: The dynamic co-existence of collectivism and
individualism in cultures and individuals. Social Development, 17, 183–209.
Triandis, H. C. (1995). Individualism and collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
252 Chen, Wang, and Liu

Wang, B. (2006). The philosophy of Zhuangzi. Beiijng: Peking University Press.


Wang, D. (2004). A survey of educational problems among children of migrant workers.
Chinese Population Science, 4, 58–64.
Yang, D. T., & Zhou, H. (1999). Rural-urban disparity and sectoral labour allocation in
China. The Journal of Development, 35, 105–133.
Yang, K. S. (1986). Chinese personality and its change. In M. H. Bond (Ed.), The psychol-
ogy of the Chinese people (pp. 106–170). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
Yi, X., & Yu, G. (2003). A review on adolescent internet addiction. China Youth Study,
12, 60–63.
Yu, R. (2002). On the reform of elementary school education in China. Educational
Exploration, 129, 56–57.
Yu, Y. S. (2004). Chinese ideological tradition and its changes in modern times. Guilin:
Guangxi Normal University Press.
Zhan, X., Sun, D., & Dong, Z. (2005). On adolescents’ school adjustment in urban and
rural China. Journal of Shangdong Normal University, 203, 144–147.
Zhang, J., & Zhao, Y. (2006). A study on the difference of values between middle school
students and their parents in Chongqing. Psychological Science, 29, 1222–1225.
Zhang, W. W. (2000). Transforming China: Economic reform and its political implications.
New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Zheng, H., & Yang, Y. (2009). Chinese private sector development in the past 30 years:
Retrospect and prospect. Discussion Paper, 45, China Policy Institute, The University
of Nottingham, UK.
Zhou, M. (1997). Growing up American: The challenge confronting immigrant children
and children of immigrants. Annual Review of Sociology, 23, 63–95.
Zhuang, Z. (2006). A hundred classic works in China: Zhungtze. Xin Jiang: Yili People’s
Press.
11 With God’s Help
The Future Orientation of Palestinian Girls in Israel
Growing Up Muslim

Rachel Seginer and Sami Mahajna

Abstract
This chapter examines how Sunni Muslim girls in Israel construct their
future orientation. Underlying are three basic premises: (1) adolescent future
orientation plays a pivotal role in guiding entrance to adulthood, (2) future
orientation is shaped by contextual forces including religious–cultural set-
ting and family environment, and (3) religious practices are shaped by local
circumstances. The article consists of three parts: (1) the conceptualization
of future orientation, (2) the developmental setting of Muslim girls in Israel,
and (3) how they construct their future orientation. This part presents a six-
step model depicting future orientation, its family antecedents and academic
achievement outcomes, and empirical estimates for two pertinent future life
domains: higher education and marriage and family. Employing a mixed-
method approach, quantitative analyses (Structural Equation Modeling)
show a good fit for each of the two empirical models. Yet, higher education
has a positive effect and marriage and family has a negative effect on aca-
demic achievement. Qualitative analyses of their hopes and fears narratives
indicate that these girls resolve the tension between devotion to religious-
traditional life via early marriage and aspirations for emancipation via higher
education by following three strategies: completing education before getting
married, marrying a supportive husband, and harnessing education for the
good of the collective.

Our work focuses on Muslim adolescent girls in Israel. Its aim is to exam-
ine how these girls construct their future orientation as they grow up in
a minority society whose relations with the Israeli Jewish majority are
characterized by both inclusion and exclusion. As citizens, they officially
bear equal rights, yet in many respects, they are excluded from the Jewish

253
254 Seginer and Mahajna

majority society on religious, national, and political grounds. Traditional


male dominance makes the life of Muslim women and girls all the more
challenging.
The analysis we present here has been instructed by three basic prem-
ises. One is that adolescent future orientation plays a pivotal role in guiding
entrance to adulthood (Douvan & Adelson, 1966; Erikson, 1968; Lewin,
1939). The second is that development occurs in context, and future ori-
entation – as one developmental process – is shaped by several contextual
forces. Of these, here we focus on family environment and the religious–
cultural setting. However, whereas family environment dimensions are
assessed and included as antecedents in the future orientation model, the
religious–cultural setting is limited to one group: Sunni Muslims in Israel.
The third premise is that religious tenets affect behavior indirectly via prac-
tices derived from those religious tenets. These practices are shaped by local
circumstances, and in the specific case studied here, create the unique cul-
ture of Sunni Muslims in Israel.
The article consists of three parts. In the first, we introduce future orienta-
tion conceptualization and its susceptibility to social and cultural processes.
The second relates to the developmental setting of Muslim girls in Israel.
Here we focus on three sociocultural processes particularly relevant to their
development: (1) the religious, cultural, and political forces affecting the
everyday life of the Muslim community in Israel; (2) the debate about and
multiple interpretations of women’s rights in Islam and its expression in the
Muslim scene in Israel; and (3) family environment particularly relevant to
the construction of future orientation: adolescent–parent relationships and
parental beliefs as perceived and reported by adolescents.
In the third part we examine how Muslim girls in Israel construct
their transition to adulthood. Toward this end, we present a multiple-step
model depicting future orientation, its family antecedents, and academic
achievement outcomes. In light of earlier findings (Seginer, 1988; Seginer &
Mahajna, 2004) showing the concern of Muslim girls in Israel about higher
education and marriage and family, we test the model on these domains
and include academic achievement as an outcome variable.

Future Orientation
Future orientation is an umbrella concept defined differently by various
future-thinking researchers. Assuming that time perspective is not inde-
pendent of its content (Nuttin and Lens, 1985) our analyses have taken
With God’s Help 255

X1 X2 X3 X4 Future Orientation
Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7 Y8 Y9 Y10 Y11 Y12
Ad-Par
Rel
Self FO FO FO Acad
Emp Mot Cog Behav Ach
Par
Beliefs

X5 X6

Figure 11.1.  The six-step future orientation theoretical model.


Ad-Par Rel = Perceived adolescent–parent relationship, Par Beliefs = Perceived parental
beliefs, Self Emp = Self empowerment, FO Mot = Future orientation motivational com-
ponent, FO Cog = Future orientation cognitive representation component, FO Behav. =
Future orientation behavioral component, Acad. Ach. = academic achievement, X1 =
Mother autonomy granting, X2 = Mother acceptance, X3 = Father autonomy grant-
ing, X4= Father acceptance, X5 = Mother’s beliefs re: higher education/early marriage,
X6 = Father’s beliefs re: higher education/ early marriage, Y1 = Self empowerment re:
education, Y2 = Self empowerment re: the materialization of hopes, Y3= Value, Y4 =
Expectance, Y5 = Internal control, Y6 = My future higher education/marriage and family,
Y7 = Exploration, Y8 = Commitment, Y9 = Final grade Arabic, Y10 = Final grade Hebrew,
Y11 = Final grade English, Y12 = Final grade mathematics.

the thematic approach to future orientation. Starting with a unidimen-


sional approach that focused on cognitive representation (Seginer, 1988;
Trommsdorff, 1986) we  – like Nurmi (1991)  – developed a multivariate
model (Seginer, 2009). This model applies to different life domains and
consists of the following three components.

The Future Orientation Three Component Model.  The model was devel-
oped in response to questions about the psychological forces that prompt
representation of future images (antecedents) and the behavioral processes
it induces (outcomes). Consequently, the model consists of motivational,
cognitive representation, and behavioral components  – each indicated
by two or three variables  – and the relations between them. Given that
motivational forces prompt both cognitive representation and behavioral
engagement, they are directly linked to both (Figure 11.1, box).

The Motivational Component.  Drawing on the value-expectance motiva-


tion theory (Atkinson, 1964; Eccles & Wigfield, 2002) and earlier future
orientation research (Nuttin & Lens, 1985; Trommsdorff, 1983), this com-
ponent is indicated by three variables: the value of prospective life domains,
expectance (i.e., subjective probability) of materialization of hopes and plans
256 Seginer and Mahajna

and its affective tone, and a sense of internal control attributing responsibil-
ity for the materialization of prospective hopes and plans to the self.

The Cognitive Representation Component.  This component draws on two


assumptions: (1) future images have both approach and avoidance aspects
as reflected in hopes and fears, respectively, and (2) assessed by how often
individuals think about each.

The Behavioral Component.  This component is indicated by two vari-


ables: exploration and commitment. Exploration pertains to behaviors
such as advice seeking and information gathering regarding future options,
whereas commitment relates to the decision to pursue one option. Their
theoretical underpinnings draw on the work of Lewin and Erikson. The
purpose of exploration is to examine future options and the extent to which
they fit personal abilities and values, social expectations, and environmental
circumstances (Lewin, 1939). Commitment results in “a sense of knowing
where one is going” (Erikson, 1968, p. 165). Both add to the instrumentality
of future orientation for the achievement of future goals.

Future Life Domains.  Earlier research (Seginer, 2008) has shown that ado-
lescents across different sociocultural settings include in their future life
space three core domains: higher education, work and career (instrumental
domains), and marriage and family (relational domain). As indicated ear-
lier, we will analyze two life domains in this study: higher education and
marriage and family. Underlying it is the importance Muslim girls in Israel
have been giving to higher education (“education is a weapon in women’s
hands,” Seginer & Mahajna, 2003, 2004) and the pressure for arranged early
marriage (in 2008, the median age of marriage for Muslim girls in Israel was
20.3 and the average age 21.3; Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2010).
Given the importance of context for the study of developmental issues
(Bronfenbrenner, 1979), the empirical analyses of the future orientation
model follow the description of Israeli Muslim cultural–religious setting
and its meaning for adolescent girls.

The Developmental Setting of Muslim Girls in Israel


This section consists of three parts. The first two describe two aspects of
the macrosystem: the world of Muslims in Israel, and growing up a Muslim
woman. The third part focuses on the microsystem as it applies to family
environment.
With God’s Help 257

The World of Muslims in Israel: An Intricate Setting


As previously noted, a basic premise of our work has been that whereas
religion is a potent marker (Paloutzian & Park, 2005), its effect is entwined
with that of culture, politics, socio-economic status, and language, and
shaped by local circumstances. Three issues are particularly relevant here.
One is that for Arabs in Israel – 83 percent of them Sunni Muslims – eth-
nicity, culture, and religion are so closely interwoven that recent compre-
hensive analyses of the Arab society in Israel (Manna, 2008; Muhammad,
2005; Rekhess & Rodntzki, 2009) and Arab women in Israel (Azaiza, Abu-
Baker, Hertz-Lazarowitz, & Ghanem, 2009) do not include a section on
religion.
The second issue relates to the status of Arabs in Israel as an oppressed
minority despite holding Israeli citizenship. As a result of the 1947–1948
Jewish-Arab war and the establishment of the State of Israel, they lost their
religious leadership and their land, and many became refugees in their
own country. Following the 1967 war, as contact with the West Bank and
Gaza Strip Palestinians resumed and disillusionment of emerging secular
leadership grew stronger; religious participation – particularly in response
to subsequent military or political crises (Rekhess, 2000)  – has been on
the rise.
This is indicated by growth in the construction of mosques, opening of
religious schools, and adoption of Islamic dress for women. Although sta-
tistical data on religiosity among Arabs in Israel is not available, a rough
estimate can be drawn from a recent Israel Central Statistics Bureau report
(2011) that among non-Jews in Israel (68 percent of whom are Muslims),
only 15 percent of women and 27 percent of men age 20+ described them-
selves as nonreligious.
The third issue pertains to the web of contradicting conditions that
characterize the life of Arabs in Israel. Although their rights as citizens
are curbed, public investment in their communities is lower, and their
sense of being discriminated against persists (Smooha, 2009), their stan-
dard of living, level of education, and occupational opportunities contin-
uously improve (Israel Central Statistics Bureau, 2010). Consequently,
both parents and adolescents aspire for adolescents’ higher education and
professional careers (Khattab, 2003). Underlying it are three motives: (1)
obtain a higher standard of living and integrate into the Israeli society, (2)
attain alternative capital to replace family land lost during the 1948 war
(Seginer & Vermulst, 2002), and (3) use education and a subsequent career
as a source of personal strength, family pride (Gregg, 2005), and national
parity.
258 Seginer and Mahajna

Growing Up a Muslim Woman in Israel


Understanding the status of Sunni Muslim women in Israel and the pros-
pects of girls growing up in this society calls for the examination of two
issues: the debate about women in the Islam, and the reality of Muslim
women in Israel.

The Debate about Women in the Islam.  Like holy writings of other reli-
gions, the Qur’an is rich with ideas, represents multiple views, and is
open to interpretation. What is true of its entirety is particularly relevant
to women in the Qur’an (Ahmed, 1992). Moreover, as noted by Pickthall
(1999), although the Qur’an mentions the name of only one woman, many
of its verses are devoted to women, including their behavior, relations with
men, and the way they dress. The main debate is whether the Qur’an teaches
equality of the sexes indicated by verses that give equal standing to men and
women (Jones, 2007, 33: 35) or male dominance, indicated by verses in
which men are described as controlling women (Jones, 2007, 4:34).
According to Ahmed (1992), Muhammad’s teachings advocated both.
However, the Abbasid Caliphate of Iraq (750–1258) chose to ignore the
equality teachings and inculcated its subjects with male dominance prin-
ciples. The power given to patriarchs created a misogynist society that sur-
vived the Caliphate and continues to shape relationships between women
and men in the family, the workplace, and the political system. This inter-
pretation survived not because it represented a more authentic version of
Muhammad’s teachings but because it was initiated by the politically dom-
inant (Ahmed, 1992).

The Reality of Muslim Women in Israel.  Presumably, the situation in Israel


should have been different. Three reasons account for this assumption. The
first is based on Israeli legislation on compulsory education and women’s
status. Compulsory education was introduced in 1953 and presently applies
to all children age 5 (kindergarten) to 18 (high school graduation). By
requiring parents to send their daughters (not only their sons) to school,
legislation created a new prospect for women. However, the greater earning
potential of adolescent boys reversed the trend. At present, school drop out
is higher among boys and more girls than boys graduate from high school
with a matriculation certificate (54 percent vs. 35 percent of the cohort for
boys) (Israel Central Statistics Bureau, 2011). Concerning women’s status,
Israeli law prohibits polygamy, minor marriage (the official marriage age for
women is 17), and unilateral divorce. In addition, the Women’s Equal Rights
Law grants women equal guardianship over their children. Nonetheless, to
With God’s Help 259

avoid open conflict with the Shari’a (Islam religious law) and introduce a
gradual reform, the state allows for concessions with the Muslim law (Peled,
2001).
The second reason is that the ethnic labor market in occupations such
as teaching, health services, and municipal services offers women jobs
in which they do not compete with the Jewish majority (Khattab, 2003),
thereby granting them greater employment openings. The third reason is
that opportunities for higher education create another avenue for profes-
sional jobs, and in principle also enable participation in the political sys-
tem. The trend that starts in high school continues in college and has a
direct bearing on women’s participation in the workforce.
Eight years after high school graduation, 30 percent of the women but
only 19 percent of the men earned a university degree. However, overall,
fewer Arab and Jewish women than Arab and Jewish men hold a paid job
(21 percent and 60 percent of Arab women and men and 58 percent and 62
percent of Jewish women and men, respectively). Among women with 16+
years of education, the workforce gap narrows: 74 percent of Arab women
(compared to 79 percent of Jewish women) hold a paid job (Israel Central
Statistics Bureau, 2011).
However, the benefits of education and career are double-edged. As in
other Muslim societies in the Middle East, educated women’s paid jobs con-
tribute to the family’s standard of living but do not improve their status.
Instead, men use it to substantiate patriarchal family patterns that lead to
women’s frustration and sense of powerlessness, which at times also affects
their health and obstructs political participation (Azaiza et al., 2009).
Moreover, the burden of carrying out two jobs – at home and in the job
market  – with no help from husbands has led women to quit paid jobs
(Abu-Baker, 2003).

Family Environment
Underlying our conceptualization of family environment are two assump-
tions: (1) that adolescents’ outcomes are affected mainly by how adolescents
experience family environment (perceived family environment), and (2) that
given its multidimensionality, the family environment in this analysis con-
sists of adolescent–parent relationships as one dimension relevant for a wide
range of adolescent development outcomes and parents’ beliefs regarding
adolescent girls’ roles as a dimension specifically relevant to future orien-
tation. Together, these two dimensions address the relational–emotional
(adolescent–parent relationships) and the cognitive–ideational (parental
beliefs) aspects of home environment.
260 Seginer and Mahajna

Adolescent–Parent Relationships.  Underlying the sustained importance


of parents for their adolescent children is the universal psychological need
for relatedness. This has been substantiated by research indicating that
adolescents regard parents as a primary source of closeness and support
(Laursen & Collins, 2009), and that perceived parental acceptance, auton-
omy granting, and strict (vs. lax) behavioral control explain a range of ado-
lescent developmental outcomes across age and culturally diverse groups
(Barber, Stolz, & Olson, 2005). Their inclusion in the model draws on the
relevance of each to adolescents’ future orientation and is supported by ear-
lier findings (Seginer, Vermulst, & Shoyer., 2004).
Briefly, autonomy granting conveys a sense of parental confidence in
their adolescent children’s ability to explore new roles and tasks, parental
warmth and support indicate a safe base to which adolescents can return
after exploring new options, and behavioral control (limit setting) guides
adolescents to stay within normative boundaries. Nonetheless, our analy-
ses for both Israeli Jews (Seginer et al., 2004) and Arabs in Israel (Seginer,
2009) resulted in a two-variable construct. For both Jewish and Arab ado-
lescents in Israel, the indicators are perceived granted autonomy and paren-
tal acceptance.

Parental Beliefs.  Parental beliefs pertain to the ideas and subjective knowl-
edge individuals hold, specifically applying to their role as parents. Like all
other beliefs, they draw on social models and personal experiences as filtered
through cultural lenses (Goodnow & Collins, 1990). Their content – commu-
nicated in family discourse and via parental behaviors – pertains to a wide
range of issues regarding the nature of children in general and of parents’
individual children, child rearing practices, and the values underlying them.
As noted earlier, in this analysis we focus on beliefs about young women’s
roles vis-à-vis higher education and early marriage. Underlying these beliefs
is the tension between entering the traditional role of wife and mother at
an early age and the pursuit of equal opportunities for education and occu-
pation (Mahajna, 2007; Seginer & Mahajna, 2004). Because beliefs reflect
cultural models and because collectivistic societies expect a greater sense
of commitment to the in-group, we assume parental beliefs about young
women’s roles are of particular relevance to Muslim girls.

How Muslim Girls in Israel Construct Transition to Adulthood


Given that for adolescents, adulthood belongs in the future, we employ
our future orientation model to answer this question. A basic premise
With God’s Help 261

underlying this model has been that each of its three components plays a
part in constructing the future. Specifically, it involves pondering the value
of each future life domain, the probability and controllability of fulfilling
their hopes (the motivational component), considering the future via hopes
and fears (the cognitive component), weighing options and focusing on one
(the behavioral component). To examine future orientation in context and
indicate its consequences for adolescents’ functioning, we developed an
extended model of future orientation that includes both family antecedents
and academic achievement outcomes, as described in the next section.

The Future Orientation Extended Model


The extended model consists of six steps: family environment, self-
­representation, the motivational, cognitive, and behavioral components of
future orientation, and academic achievement (Figure 11.1). Underlying
the extended model are three considerations: the importance of the family
during adolescence, the role of the self in linking interpersonal relationship
and human functioning, and the effect of future orientation on behavior.
The paths between the future orientation components are explained in the
section on future orientation; therefore, in this section, we focus on the
direct and indirect paths between family environment and future orienta-
tion via self-representation, and the path between future orientation and
academic achievement.

The Paths between Family Environment and Future Orient­


ation.  Underlying these paths are three notions. One relates to the impor-
tance of family environment to adolescents’ future orientation, as previously
discussed. The second draws on family environment as consisting of rela-
tional–emotional (adolescent–parent relationships) and cognitive (paren-
tal beliefs) aspects. The third pertains to self-representations as consciously
experienced and self-reported by the individual, and the role of the self in
processing incoming information and prompting a wide range of behaviors
(Harter, 1999).
Given the importance of the evaluative aspect of the self (James,
1890/1950) and drawing on Muslim girls’ narratives in which they empha-
size self-reliance (Mahajna & Seginer, 2004), Mahajna (2007) focused on
self-empowerment. Based on the role of the self as processer of incoming
information, we postulated that the path between each of the two aspects
of family environment  – i.e., adolescent–parent relationships and paren-
tal beliefs  – is indirect and goes via self-empowerment. However, earlier
findings (Seginer & Mahajna, 2004; Seginer, 2009) showing that parental
262 Seginer and Mahajna

beliefs are directly linked to future orientation led us to also postulate a


direct parental beliefs–future orientation path.

Future Orientation and Academic Achievement.  The link between


future orientation and academic achievement draws on research about
the instrumentality of present behavior for materializing future goals. This
research – emanating from different psychological traditions and using dif-
ferent terminologies – has taken two directions. One examines the extent
to which individuals are cognizant of the future goals–present behavior
contingency. Research on considering future consequences of present behav-
ior (Joireman, Anderson, & Strathman, 2003) or perceived instrumental-
ity of present behavior for the materialization of future goals (Husman &
Lens, 1999; Nuttin & Lens, 1985) addresses this issue. The second direction
focuses on behaviors relevant to the materialization of future goals, such as
task-specific self regulating strategies (Oyserman, Bybee, & Terry, 2006) and
domain-specific behaviors of exploration and commitment.

Domain Specificity.  Although the model is generic and fits data about
various future life domains, we propose that the path between future ori-
entation and academic achievement is positive for higher education and
negative for marriage and family. Underlying it is the different meaning
of the two domains and the girls’ awareness that academic achievement is
instrumental for higher education admission but of no avail for early mar-
riage. To illustrate, “…I am getting married this summer, so why should I
worry about education?” (Seginer & Mahajna, 2011).

Empirical Estimates.  To empirically estimate this model we collected data


from 617 11th grade girls (Mahajna, 2007) who attended the Arab educa-
tional system in Israel and participated in the matriculation program. A
year later (at the end of 12th grade), girls successfully passing the state-
administered examinations would be granted a State of Israel matriculation
certificate (a necessary but not sufficient condition for admission to colleges
and universities). Our participants grew up in rural Israel, in large families
(mean number of children = 6.46 SD = 2.40) and relatively low education
parents (M = 9.87 years for mothers and 10.89 years for fathers, with SDs
of 3.13 and 3.28 for mothers and fathers, respectively). Whereas all fathers
were wage earners, only 30 percent of the mothers held a paid job. Given
their level of education, only 15 percent of fathers and 4 percent of moth-
ers held professional jobs. Data about family environment, self-empower-
ment, and future orientation were collected by self-report native language
With God’s Help 263

X1 X2 X3 X4
Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7 Y8 Y9 Y10 Y11 Y12
Ad-Par
Rel .52
Self .36 FO .76 FO .68 FO .34 Acad
.67 .09 Emp Mot Cog Behav Ach
Par ζ1=.66 ζ2=.57 ζ3=.42 ζ4=.37
Beliefs .42 .14 3 ζ5=.88

X5 X6

X1 X2 X3 X4
Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7 Y8 Y9 Y10 Y11 Y12
Ad-Par
Rel .57
Self .08 FO .60 FO .65 FO –.27 Acad
–.38 –.01 Emp Mot Cog Behav Ach
Par ζ1=.67 ζ2=.89 ζ3=.63 ζ4=.37
Beliefs .34 .21 ζ5=.93

X5 X6

Figure 11.2  Empirical estimate of the six-step future orientation model: (a) The higher
education domain N = 617, CFI = .963 RMSEA = .045; (b) The marriage and family
domain. N = 617, CFI  = .944 RMSEA = .055.

(Arabic) questionnaires, and academic achievement by end-of-year school


reports of final grades in four core subjects: Arabic, Hebrew, English, and
mathematics.
Specifically, perceived family environment was assessed using the
Mother-Father questionnaire as a measure of perceived adolescent–parent
relationships (Epstein, 1983; Seginer, 1998; Seginer, Shoyer, Hossessi, &
Tannous, 2007) and by the perceived parental beliefs questionnaire per-
taining to parents’ beliefs about girls’ higher education and early marriage
(Mahajna, 2007). Self-empowerment was assessed by a scale developed by
Mahajna (2007), and future orientation by an Arabic version (Mahajna,
2000, 2007) of the future orientation battery (Seginer, 2009, Seginer et al.,
2004). All scales had adequate internal consistency coefficients, ranging
from α = .62 (a 3-item scale) to α = .90 (a 5-item scale).
Employing structural equation modeling (SEM, Amos 17), the model
was tested once for the higher education domain and once for the marriage
and family domain. Figures 11.2a and 11.2b show the relations between the
latent variables (parameters are standardized regression weights) and the
goodness of fit of each model; the factor loadings of the manifest (empir-
ical) variables on respective latent variables are all significant and range
from .40 to .95.
Examination of the relations between the latent variables points to four
findings worth noting here. (1) Perceived adolescent–parent relationships
is positively related to perceived parental beliefs favoring higher education
264 Seginer and Mahajna

and negatively related to perceived parental beliefs favoring early marriage.


(2) Regardless of their content, for both empirical models, the perceived
parental beliefs–self-empowerment path is nonsignificant. Thus, it is per-
ceived relationship and not perceived ideas that affect the girls’ sense of self-
empowerment. (3) The path from self-empowerment to the motivational
component is positive and significant for the higher education but not for the
marriage and family domain. Two conclusions follow. One, motivation for
higher education draws on the girls’ intrapersonal forces indicated by sense of
self-empowerment as well as on perceived parental beliefs about higher edu-
cation. Conversely, motivation for marriage and family is affected only by the
cognitive–ideational aspect of family environment instantiated by perceived
parental beliefs regarding early marriage. Second, self-representation indi-
cated by self-empowerment may not be a generalized mediator; instead, it is
especially relevant for mediating relational–emotional aspects of reality.
(4) The behavioral component–academic achievement path is positive
for the higher education domain and negative for the marriage and family
domain. The meaning of the difference between these paths goes beyond
their different signs. The positive link between the behavioral component of
the higher education is in line with theory and earlier findings about Israeli
Muslim and secular Jewish girls and boys, and ultraorthodox Jewish girls
(Seginer, 2009). Conversely, as also reported in other studies (Seginer, 2009),
the negative path between the behavioral component of marriage and fam-
ily and academic achievement is unique to Muslim girls; it is nonsignificant
for Israeli Muslim boys and Jewish secular girls and boys, and positive for
Jewish ultraorthodox girls (Seginer, 2009). Underlying it are two opposite
considerations: one of girls presently giving priority to education and high
academic achievement over early marriage, and the other of girls engaged
to be married and who therefore view education as unimportant.
In sum, in constructing their future, Muslim girls in Israel both resem-
ble and differ from other adolescent groups. Similar to other groups (such
as Muslim boys and Jewish girls and boys), their future orientation plays
a pivotal role in linking family environment and academic achievement,
perceived adolescent–parent relationship is directly related to the self, and
higher education (an instrumental domain) has a positive effect on aca-
demic achievement.
Differences pertain mostly to the marriage and family domain. Specifically,
its motivational component is affected only by parental beliefs (not by the
self) and academic achievement is negatively linked to future orientation.
Of special interest is the link with academic achievement. Whereas for
Muslim boys and secular Jewish girls and boys this link is nonsignificant
With God’s Help 265

(indicating they regard academic achievement as irrelevant to marriage and


family), Jewish ultraorthodox girls consider it relevant (as indicated by the
positive link): they regard it as facilitating their role in providing income
and being good mothers (Seginer, Shoyer, & Dekel, 2011).

Navigating toward the Future in Context: Entwining Education and


Family.  As noted earlier, Muslim girls in Israel grow up in an intricate
religious-cultural-political reality. We would like to argue that its relevance
to their future orientation, its family and self antecedents, and academic
achievement outcomes is enhanced because of the keen awareness Muslim
girls in Israel have of their reality. Thus, one girl described their situation as
emanating from growing up in “… a country that does not exactly provide
equal opportunities, which adds to the unique difficulties of young Arab
women.” These difficulties emanate from community and family pressure
toward early marriage and the girls’ struggle to enter higher education. In
the girl’s voice:
I hope public opinion about women and girls will change one day, so that girls
will not be engaged to be married while still in junior high school.1
I know girls face big challenges in our society. Many people, especially those in
their immediate environment try to stand in their way [to pursue education]. I
worry about them but will not give in.
As we interpret these findings, two processes become clear and both draw
on Muslim male dominance. One recognizes the importance of self-empow-
erment for pursuing the nontraditional path of higher education, and the
second relies on parental beliefs about early marriage for pursuing the
religion-instructed path of early marriage and family. In a society strongly
encouraging early marriage for women and expressing ambivalence toward
higher education (considered positive because education is good for child
rearing and may also give better job opportunities; negative because it may
mean being away from home, seeking independence, and interfering with
early marriage), a future orientation emphasizing higher education must rely
on the girls’ inner strength and self-determination (self-empowerment).
The relevance of self-reliance to girls’ academic achievement has been
indicated by an earlier study of Israeli Muslim 8th graders (Seginer &
Vermulst, 2002). The study reports that girls’ academic achievement
is directly affected by educational aspirations, whereas boys’ academic
achievement is directly and negatively affected by parental demands. Thus,
as early as 8th grade for Muslim girls in Israel, academic achievement does
not draw on parental guidance but rather on their own.
266 Seginer and Mahajna

Moreover, our findings have shown that whereas in all other groups
examined by us, the motivational component of the instrumental domains
(higher education, work and career) as well as the relational domain (mar-
riage and family) is affected by a sense of self-worth (Seginer, 2009; Seginer
et al., 2004), for Muslim girls, the motivational component of the marriage
and family domain is linked only to traditional Muslim parental beliefs that
instruct early marriage for women. Underlying it is the Muslim patriarchal
family system (Booth, 2002) whereby through marriage, male dominance is
transmitted from father and other family males to husband.
However, as noted in earlier analyses of Muslim girls’ future orientation
(Seginer, 2005; Seginer & Mahajna, 2004), the pursuit of higher educa-
tion rarely involves an open questioning of religious practices or paternal
authority. Instead, Muslim girls seek ways to intertwine emancipation (via
education) and tradition (via accepting arranged marriage). Their hopes
and fears narratives reveal three such ways. One is sequential pursuit of edu-
cation and marriage: the preferred order is education first followed by mar-
riage. Consider the following excerpts from our study interviews:
“Regarding marriage, I think a girl should get married only after completing
her education. I hope God will help with my education and my marriage. I am
not against being engaged after I complete my matriculation examinations. As
long as my fiancé will agree that I continue my education and that our wedding
will not take place immediately.”
However, girls for whom marriage has been arranged before high school grad-
uation find comfort in hopes to resume education, “later on.”
In the future I would like to continue my education and I will insist on it. At the
end of the school year I am getting married. I hope my family life will be good
and successful and my husband will support and encourage me to continue my
education.
I wish I could graduate from high school, study Psychology and only then think
about marriage. But the circumstances in which I live force me to get married
now after I graduate from 11th grade. I fear I will regret I left school although it
is not my fault. But I think that later on I will go back to school.
A second way is hoping for a supportive husband. This is the most common
and least efficacious consolation girls develop for themselves: “I hope to be for-
tunate and be engaged to a person who is understanding, open, and respects
the woman, and will agree to share responsibility for our home and children. I
hope he will support me so I can continue my education and not be a stumbling
block against my dream for higher education.” Another states, “I hope to God
to send me a man who encourages women’s education. I do not think I have a
hope which is more important than this one.”
With God’s Help 267

The third way is harnessing education for the good of her family and
community:
“I want to be a devoted wife. Therefore, I need to have education so that I can
be a devoted wife” and “My hopes are to continue my education, be an excel-
lent medical doctor, get married, be an exemplary wife and contribute to our
society.”

Will an Entwined Future be Materialized?


This study as the one by Pearce and Hardie (Chapter 12 in this volume)
shows that across different cultural settings and when using differ-
ent research question, religion has a considerable impact on how girls
chart their future. Whether or not Muslim girls in Israel will be success-
ful in meeting the challenges emanating from being a devoted Muslim
and a dutiful wife without giving up higher education and career is not
clear. On the one hand, as Islamization grows stronger in the majority
of Middle East societies, the tension between it and democracy grows
stronger and has a direct bearing on women (Rizzo, Meyer, & Ali, 2002).
On the other hand, recent data (Israel Central Statistics Bureau, 2011)
showing rise in the number of Muslim girls in Israel who graduate from
high school and college suggest education is becoming more accessible
to them. Underlying this trend are multiple psychological and social
processes that future research needs to examine. One relates to recent
“Muslim ethicist” religiosity that endorses the personal achievement of
young men as a source of family pride (Gregg, 2005), raising the question
whether it will also become acceptable for women. The other pertains
to their families and community. Specifically, the questions remain as
to whether women’s emancipation via higher education and career will
indeed be endorsed by the cohort of men to whom they will be married,
and if the image of the ideal husband who supports women’s education
will indeed become true.

Acknowledgment
The authors wish to acknowledge the help of Sandra Zukerman in data
analysis and of Shirli Shoyer in the production of this manuscript.

Notes

1. All quotes of girls’ narratives were jointly translated and back-translated by both
authors. Mahajna is native speaker of Arabic and Seginer is responsible for the
English.
268 Seginer and Mahajna

References

Abu-Baker, K. (2003). “Career woman” or “working woman”? Change versus stability for
young Palestinian women in Israel. Journal of Israeli History, 21, (1–2), 85–109.
Ahmed, L. (1992). Women and gender in Islam: Historical roots of modern debate. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Atkinson, J. W. (1964). An introduction to motivation. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.
Azaiza, F., Abu-Baker, K., Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., & Ghanem, A. (2009). Introduction.
In F. Azaiza, K. Abu-Baker, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz, & A. Ghanem (Eds.), Arab
women in Israel: Current status and future trends (pp. 5–16). Tel Aviv: Ramot.
(Hebrew)
Barber, B., Stolz, H., Olson, J. O., Collins, A., & Burchinal, M. (2005). Parental support,
psychological control, and behavioral control: Assessing relevance across time, cul-
ture, and method. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 70,
1–137. doi: 10.1111/j.1540–5834.2005.00365.x
Booth, M. (2002). Arab adolescents facing the future: Enduring ideals and pressures
to change. In B. B. Brown, R. W. Larson, & T. S. Saraswathi (Eds.), The world’s
youth: Adolescence in eight regions of the globe (pp. 207–242). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature
and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Douvan, E., & Adelson, J. (1966). The adolescent experience. New York: Wiley
Eccles, J. S., & Wigfield, A. (2002). Motivation, beliefs, and goals. Annual Review of
Psychology, 53, 109–132. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135153
Epstein, S. (1983). Scoring and interpretation of the mother-father-peer scale. Unpublished
manuscript, University of Massachusetts.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, youth and crisis. New York: Norton.
Goodnow, J. J., & Collins, W. A. (1990). Development according to parents. Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Gregg, G. S. (2005). The Middle East: A cultural psychology. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Harter, S. (1999). The construction of the self. New York: Guilford.
Husman, J., & Lens, W. (1999). The role of the future in student motivation. Educational
Psychologist, 34, 113–125. doi: 10.1207/s15326985ep3402_4
Israel Central Statistical Bureau (2010). Israel Statistical Yearbook. Jerusalem: Central
Bureau of Statistics.
  (2011). Women and men. Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics. (Hebrew)
James, W. (1890/1950). The principles of psychology. New York: Dover Publications.
Joireman, J., Anderson, J., & Strathman, A. (2003). The aggression paradox:
Understanding links among aggression, sensation seeking, and the consideration
of future consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1287–1302.
doi: 10.1037/0022–3514.84.6.1287
Jones, A. (2007). The Qur’an translation into English. Cambridge: Gibbs Memorial
Trust.
Khattab, N. (2003). Segregation, ethnic labor market and the occupational expecta-
tions of Palestinian students in Israel. British journal of sociology, 54, 259–285. doi:
10.1080/0007131032000080230
With God’s Help 269

Laursen, B., & Collins, W. A. (2009). Parent–child relationships during adolescence. In


R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psychology (3rd Ed.,
Vol. 2, pp 3–42). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Lewin, K. (1939). Field theory and experiment in social psychology. American Journal of
Sociology, 44, 868–896. doi: 10.1086/218177
Mahajna, S. (2007). Future orientation: Its nature and meaning among girls from different
Israeli Arab settings. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Haifa, Israel.
Manna, A. (2008). Arab society in Israel. Jerusalem: The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.
(Hebrew)
Muhammad, A. E. (2005). Palestinians in Israel: Socio-economic survey. Shefa-Amr,
Israel: The Galilee Society.
Nurmi, J. E. (1991). How do adolescents see their future? A review of the develop-
ment of future orientation and planning. Developmental Review, 11, 1–59. doi:
10.1016/0273–2297(91)90002–6
Nuttin, J., & Lens, W. (1985). Future time perspective and motivation: Theory and research
method. Location: Erlbaum.
Oyserman, D., Bybee, D., & Terry, K. (2006). Possible selves and academic outcomes:
How and when possible selves impel action. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 91, 188–204. doi: 10.1037/0022–3514.91.1.188
Paloutzian, R. F., & Park, C. L. (2005). Integrative themes in the current science of the
psychology of religion. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the
psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 3–20). New York: Guilford.
Peled, A. R. (2001). Debating Islam in the Jewish state. Albany: State University of New
York Press.
Pickthall, M. (1999). The Quran: Differing interpretation of the divine word. In R. Roded
(Ed.), Women in the Middle East (pp. 27–31). New York: I. B. Tauris.
Rekhess, E. (2000). The Islamic movement in Israel. In R. Gabizon & D. Hacker (Eds.), The
Jewish-Arab rift in Israel (pp. 271–296). Jerusalem: The Israel Democracy Institute.
Rekhess, E., & Rodnitzki, A. (2009). Information manual on the Arab society in Israel.
Neve Ilan, Israel: The Abraham Fund Initiatives. (Hebrew)
Rizzo, H., Meyer, K., & Ali, Y (2002). Women’s political rights: Islam, status and net-
works in Kuwait. Sociology, 36, 639–662. doi: 10.1177/0038038502036003008
Seginer, R. (1988). Social milieu and future orientation: The case of kibbutz vs. urban
adolescents. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 11, 247–273.
  (1998). Adolescents’ perception of relationships with older sibling in the context of
other close relationships. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 8, 287–308. 10.1207/
s15327795jra0803_1
  (2005). Adolescent future orientation: Intergenerational transmission and intertwin-
ing tactics in cultural and family settings. In W. Friedlemeier, P. Chakkarath, & B.
Schwarz (Eds.), Culture and human development: The importance of cross-cultural
research for the social sciences (pp. 231–251). New York: Psychology Press.
  (2008). Future orientation in times of threat and challenge: How resilient adolescents
construct their future. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 32, 272–
282. doi: 10.1177/0165025408090970
  (2009). Future orientation: Developmental and ecological perspectives. New York:
Springer.
270 Seginer and Mahajna

Seginer, R., & Mahajna, S. (2004). How the future orientation of traditional Israeli Palesti­
nian girls link beliefs about women’s roles and academic achievement. Psychology
of Women Quarterly, 28, 122–135. doi: 10.1111/j.1471–6402.2004.00129.x
  (2012). How future orientation links parenting and academic achievement: Gender
differences among Muslim adolescents. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Seginer, R., Shoyer, S., & Dekel, S. (2011). Future orientation in context: The case of
Jewish ultra-orthodox and secular girls. In preparation.
Seginer, R., Shoyer, S., Hossessi, R., & Tannous, H. (2007). Adolescent family and peer
relationships: Does culture matter? In R. W. Larson & L. A. Jensen (Series Eds.),
New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (No. 116). B. B. Brown & N.
S. Mounts (Vol. Eds.), Linking parents and family to adolescent peer relations: Ethnic
and cultural considerations (pp. 83–99). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Seginer, R., & Vermulst, A. (2002). Family environment, educational aspirations, and
academic achievement in two cultural settings. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology,
33, 540–558. doi: 10.1177/00220022102238268
Seginer, R., Vermulst, A., & Shoyer, S. (2004). The indirect link between perceived parent-
ing and adolescent future orientation: A multiple-step analysis. International Journal
of Behavioral Development, 28, 365–378. doi: 10.1080/01650250444000081
Smooha, S. (2009). The 2008 Index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel 2008. Haifa, Israel:
The Jewish-Arab Center, the University of Haifa (Hebrew).
Trommsdorff, G. (1983). Future orientation and socialization. International Journal of
Psychology, 18, 381–406. doi: 10.1080/00207598308247489
  (1986). Future time orientation and its relevance for development as action. In R.
K. Silbereisen, K. Eyferth, & G. Rudinger (Eds.), Development as action in con-
text: Problem behavior and normal youth development (pp. 121–136). New York:
Springer-Verlag.
12 Religion’s Role in the Development of Girls’
Occupational Aspirations

Lisa D. Pearce and Jessica Halliday Hardie

Abstract
In this chapter we explore the influence of religion on female adolescents
through the use of both nationally representative, longitudinal survey data
and semi-structured, in-person interviews from the National Study of Youth
and Religion. Our results suggest that growing up in a religious family, espe-
cially those involved in religious institutions, may result in an increased
identification with femininity and a heightened emphasis on care, leading
to preference for more female-dominated jobs like teaching, nursing, and
other medical assistant type work. Adolescent girls (ages 16–21) express a
preference for these careers over business, science, or other male-dominated
(and more highly paid) professions while directly referring to a personal
desire for an altruistic, rewarding, and “family friendly” career track. These
gendered career aspirations sort girls into limited career tracks early in their
educational lives and often well before family formation processes begin,
likely contributing to continued gender inequality in educational and career
attainment. Although occupational aspirations are thought to be primarily
products of social class and ability, we argue that cultural forces such as reli-
gion provide a system of meaning and values that shape how girls imagine
their futures.

When adolescents imagine their future selves, they are setting goals that
will influence their current behavior (Oyserman & James, 2009). They are
defining the potential they see in themselves. Although adolescent career or
occupational aspirations are not perfectly correlated with eventual achieve-
ment, there is a sizeable association (Campbell, 1983; Eccles, Vida, & Barber,
2004; Schoon, 2001; Sewell, Haller, & Portes, 1969). Further, although the
gap is shrinking, girls tend to have less prestigious occupational aspirations

271
272 Pearce and Hardie

than boys, and this likely contributes to continued gender inequality in


occupational prestige and earnings (Correll, 2001; Lips, 2004; Mahaffy &
Ward, 2002; Marini & Greenberger, 1978; Nash, 1979). Specifically, largely
owing to forces of gender socialization, girls tend to imagine themselves
attaining jobs that women more typically hold (e.g., teacher, nurse, wait-
ress, etc.) (Frome, et al., 2006; Murrell, Frieze, & Frost, 1991; Shu & Marini,
1998). These female-dominated occupations are less prestigious and pay
less than male-dominated jobs with similar educational or experience pre-
requisites (Glick, 1991; Yoder, 1994). It is therefore important to under-
stand the social forces shaping girls’ occupational aspirations, especially the
level of female presence in the occupations to which they aspire.
Prior studies of youth occupational aspirations have primarily focused on
social class and intergenerational processes to explain differences in aspirations
that ultimately influence social mobility and the reproduction of inequality
(Massey, Gebhardt, & Garnefski, 2008). Few studies have addressed the role
of cultural factors, such as religion, that may shape the goals to which youth
and especially young girls aspire. Yet religious involvement in the United
States has been found to increase social capital and encourage prosocial and
achievement-oriented behavior in youth (Muller & Ellison, 2001). At the
same time, many American religious institutions send overt messages to girls
about the value of motherhood and family life (Denton, 2004; Fan & Marini,
2000). In this chapter, we explore how values encouraged through religious
participation and internalization shape girls’ occupational aspirations. We
use nationally representative, longitudinal survey data and semi-structured,
in-person interviews from the National Study of Youth and Religion (Smith
& Denton, 2005) to show how parent religiosity and youth religious affiliation
and religiosity are related to girls’ aspirations.

Possible Selves, Possible Careers


“Possible selves” are visions of oneself at a future point in time or the “future-
oriented aspects of self-concept” (Oyserman & James, 2009). Adolescence
is a time in which youth are especially focused on developing their possible
selves in terms of education, occupation, and future family life (Massey
et al., 2008). How one imagines his/her future in terms of education, career,
or family life depends on the other two types of possible selves. Research
suggests that girls consider future family desires even more than boys when
setting educational and career goals (Eccles, 1994; Nurmi, 1994). They may
therefore select occupations that appear family friendly or are similar to
Religion and Girls’ Occupational Aspirations 273

jobs held by mothers they know. Their personal value orientations may also
influence their occupational aspirations. Research shows that in general,
young women attach greater value to intrinsic, altruistic, and social rewards
from their work than young men and this shows in the types of jobs to
which they aspire (Marini, et al., 1996; Weisgram, Bigler, & Liben, 2010).
Prior studies have identified several correlates of the occupational aspi-
rations of adolescent girls. First, as adolescents age, they mature cognitively
and begin to more seriously consider their occupational goals (Nurmi, 1994).
Second, the family context greatly shapes the type of career to which a girl
aspires. Living with two parents increases the financial and emotional sup-
port available to girls as they develop their aspirations (Teachman & Paasch,
1998). However, the more siblings one has, the further the resources are
stretched, so it is likely that girls from larger families temper their aspirations.
Also, the more education one’s mother and/or father have attained, the more
prestigious is the occupation to which a girl aspires (Glick & White, 2003;
Hitlin, 2006; Shu & Marini, 2008). Family income signals resources, and is
likely to increase a girl’s confidence in being able to accomplish her goals
(Massey et al., 2008). Finally, aspirations are often shaped by one’s assessment
of their abilities and dedication. This is reflected through evidence that an
adolescent’s GPA is related to her aspirations (Davis & Pearce, 2007).
What is conspicuously missing from research on the development of girls’
occupational aspirations is the role of cultural institutions such as religion
that cultivate values that influence aspirations. Culture is an important con-
text in which the development of aspirations occurs (Seginer 2003), so studies
often evaluate whether there are racial/ethnic differences in prestige of occu-
pational aspirations after socioeconomic factors are controlled, but evidence
is weak for any such differences in the United States (Chang, et al., 2006;
Phinney, Baumann, & Blanton, 2001). Culture expressed through the tenets
of a religious congregation, however, may influence adolescents’ aspirations.
Seginer (2003) reports that Israeli Jewish (kibbutz and urban), Arab, and
Druze adolescents have unique future orientations, specifically, some think
more prospectively than others. To further explore the role of cultural factors
in shaping occupational aspirations in adolescence, we focus on religion and
the aspiration to a more female-dominated occupation among girls.

Religion and Possible Careers


There is a great deal of research and attention to the relationship between
one’s religious background and educational aspirations and achievement or
274 Pearce and Hardie

economic well-being as adults. However, far less attention has been paid to
religion’s role in the forming of occupational aspirations, a key mechanism
linking educational aspirations and attainment to eventual occupational
prestige and achievement. Therefore, as we theorize the possible influence
that religious affiliation, parent religiosity, and youth religiosity might have
on the careers to which an adolescent girl aspires, we draw on the literature
relating religion to educational and occupational outcomes.

Religious Affiliation
The religious tradition, group, or denomination with which an individual
affiliates is largely representative of the types of religious beliefs and ide-
ologies to which she is most exposed (Mishra, Chapter 18 in this volume).
When it comes to adolescents, they often carry the same religious affiliation
as their parents, but as they develop autonomy, they may switch or drop
religious affiliations altogether (Pearce & Denton, 2011). In recent research,
the religious groups that have been shown to be most different in terms of
educational and occupational aspirations and achievement are conserva-
tive Protestants, sometimes referred to as Evangelical or Fundamentalist1
Protestants. This is argued to be especially relevant for girls because con-
servative Protestant leaders, writings, and adherents are more likely to
idealize a breadwinner-housewife model of marriage such that men work
outside the home and women specialize in managing the home and caring
for children (Denton, 2004; Pearce & Thornton, 2007). It is not that educa-
tion and labor force participation are completely discouraged, but home-
and family-based labor is prioritized over breadwinning activities. Given
that less importance is placed on women’s occupational achievement, and
that gendered socialization is a powerful force among this group, it is likely
that conservative Protestant girls will be especially likely to aspire to more
female-dominated occupations.

Public Religiosity
Another dimension of religiosity is public practice or attending religious
services. Most religions promote family life (childbearing and child rear-
ing) and, to some degree, most religious institutions socialize adherents to
the notion that these are primarily women’s responsibilities (Edgell, 2006;
Seginer and Mahajna, Chapter 11 in this volume). Therefore, the time that
parents and children spend in religious institutions is likely to cultivate val-
ues that gender the worlds of family and work (Glass & Kanellakos, 2006).
Parents’ attendance will reinforce these values about the gendered nature
of work and family life that they will then demonstrate for their children.
Religion and Girls’ Occupational Aspirations 275

Adolescent girls’ exposure to religious services and coreligionists will be a


source of socialization for the notion that women should specialize in car-
ing for family members (Glass & Jacobs, 2005). It is often assumed that if
they do work, they should choose careers that are typically held by women.
Many of the male-dominated professional occupations have reputations as
demanding personal or family sacrifice and punishing those who take time
out of the labor force for such reasons as maternity leave (Ridgeway, 2002).

Private Religiosity
Yet another dimension of religiosity is the private or personal dimension. It
may be the importance one places on religion, the time one spends praying
alone, the reading of sacred scripture, or other private practices. This is a
unique aspect of religiosity because it does not involve social interaction. It
represents the degree to which someone internalizes religiosity as part of
his or her identity. Again, because religions are often pro-family, especially
for women, the internalization and valuing of these messages reinforced by
one’s own personal reliance on religious faith could mean that when par-
ents find religion to be an important aspect of their identity, they are more
encouraging of their daughters choosing a more female-dominated career.
Girls themselves who find religion to be a very important part of their lives
might prioritize their future family plans over investments in education and
career achievement that are likely to lead to more prestigious occupations
more commonly held by men (Glass & Jacobs, 2005; Glass & Kanellakos,
2006).

Linking Religion to Girls’ Possible Careers


Our goal in this chapter is to understand the ways religion shapes girls’
occupational aspirations. Prior research has found that holding values for
altruism and family tend to motivate interest in female-dominated occu-
pations (Marini, et al., 1996; Weisgram, et al., 2010), occupational aspira-
tions predict attainment (Campbell, 1983; Eccles, et al., 2004; Schoon, 2001;
Sewell, et al., 1969), and that female-dominated occupations typically offer
less pay and prestige than male-dominated occupations at equivalent lev-
els of education (Glick, 1991; Yoder, 1994). Religion is expected to play a
role in this process by influencing girls’ occupational values and aspirations
(Trommsdorff, Chapter 1 in this volume). Girls who are affiliated with more
conservative Protestant denominations, for instance, may be more likely
to aspire to female-dominated occupations because of the messages about
gender and family these congregations promote (Mayer and Trommsdorff,
276 Pearce and Hardie

Chapter 15 in this volume). Similarly, girls who attend religious services


more frequently will receive these messages on a more consistent basis,
and therefore are likely to aspire to more female-dominated occupations.
Personal religiosity is also expected to play a role, as girls who internal-
ize these religious messages and values express them in their daydreams
about the future. Finally, young women’s gender role attitudes and family
plans may be mechanisms through which religious affiliation, religiosity,
and attendance influence occupational aspirations.
To examine the role of religion in girls’ occupational aspirations, our study
employs quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data from the
National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) to examine whether and how
religion shapes girls’ occupational aspirations. In the next section, we describe
our survey data and findings. Following this, we describe our analytic design
and data for the qualitative portion of the study and discuss our findings.

National Study of Youth and Religion


The NSYR is a nationally representative survey of youth, designed to pro-
vide information regarding the religious beliefs and practices of teenagers
in the United States. The first wave of this study was conducted in 2002 and
2003 with a sample of 3,290 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 and
their parents. In 2005, nearly 80 percent of these participants were reinter-
viewed. For our analysis of girls’ occupational aspirations, we include only
female respondents who participated in Waves 1 and 2, for a sample size of
1,039. Our aim in using this data was to understand the role religious affil-
iation, religious attendance, religiosity, and gender role attitudes played in
predicting teenage girls’ occupational aspirations.
In the NSYR survey, respondents were asked, “What job or occupation
do you think you will have when you are thirty-five years old?” Responses
were transformed into the percent of job holders who were women using
published data available through the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2006). For example, the occupational aspi-
ration “lawyer” was recoded into a value of 30.2, because 30.2 percent of
lawyers were female in 2005. This is a measure of the current “female-ness”
of a given occupation’s population. Those with a percentage higher than 50
are more female-dominated, and those with a percentage lower than 50 are
more male-dominated occupations. Figure 12.1 shows the distribution of
this variable for all female NSYR survey respondents. The mean is 59 per-
cent female, and we have highlighted where a few occupations fall on the
continuum.
Religion and Girls’ Occupational Aspirations 277

00

0
0 0 0 0 0 00

Figure 12.1.  Distribution of percent-female in the occupations to which NSYR female


survey respondents aspire.

Participants’ reports of their religious affiliations, beliefs, and practices


show a generally high level of membership in Protestant religions and high
public and private religiosity among parents and children. Our measure
of religious affiliation2 was created by the youth respondent’s report of the
“religious tradition, denomination, or church” with which they identified
most closely. Evangelical Protestants comprised 32 percent of our samples,
compared to 12 percent Mainline Protestant, 11 percent African American
Protestant, 26 percent Catholic, 3 percent Mormon, 2 percent Jewish, 5 per-
cent other religion, and 6 percent unaffiliated. Our parent religious service
attendance indicates how often the responding parent had attended reli-
gious services in the previous 12 months from never (0) to more than once
a week (6). On average, parents reported attending church slightly more
than 2–3 times a month, but less than once a week. Youth were asked the
same question about religious service attendance that parents received, and
reported similar levels of attendance. Our measure of parental importance
of religion comes from parents being asked, “How important is your reli-
gious faith in providing guidance in your own day-to-day living: Extremely
Important (coded 6), Very, Fairly, Somewhat, Not very, or Not Important
at all (coded 1)?” Parents reported an average response of 5, equivalent to
278 Pearce and Hardie

“very important.” Teens’ private religiosity is a scaled measure of the sum


of all standardized measures of the following variables: wear religious jew-
elry, fast as part of a religious ritual, listen to religious music, try to practice
weekly day of rest, read religious/spiritual books, pray by yourself alone,
read from the Bible alone, importance of faith in shaping daily life, and
importance of faith in shaping decisions.
We also include measures of young women’s gender role attitudes and
family plans to test whether any of these factors act as mechanisms for the
influence of religion on occupational aspirations. Responses were asked if
they “Strongly Agree (5), Agree (4), Disagree (2), or Strongly Disagree (1)”
that “A working mother can establish as warm and secure a relationship
with her children as a mother who does not work” and “It is better if a man
makes money and a woman takes care of home and family.” Undecided
responses were coded 3. We also use measures of ideal age at marriage
(What do you think is the ideal age to get married?) and fertility intentions
(In total, how many children do you intend to have?).
Finally, we incorporate a standard set of control variables to account for
youth and family characteristics at Wave 1 that are likely related to both
religious characteristics and occupational aspirations. We use self-reports
of age and race/ethnicity from Wave 1 (2002). Family socioeconomic sta-
tus is controlled for through measures of parents’ education and house-
hold income. Income was grouped into categories of less than 150 percent
of the poverty line, 150 to 250 percent of the poverty line, 250 percent to
four times the poverty line, and over four times the poverty line.3 We also
include a variable for missing income. Family structure is measured using a
measure of the number of children living in the same household as the focal
child and a dichotomous indicator of whether the youth lived with his or
her married (biological or adoptive) parents. GPA was measured categori-
cally and converted into approximate numeric values to match a 0–4.0 scale
from “Fs” to “As.”

Survey Findings
Table 12.1 displays results from an ordinary least squares regression anal-
ysis of how parent and youth religious characteristics shape subsequent
occupational aspirations through a set of attitudes and controlling for a set
of standard sociodemographic characteristics. We find that affiliation is
unrelated to occupational aspirations, except among Jewish respondents.
On average, Jewish girls aspire to occupations that are 11 percent lower on
the continuum of percent female than the average occupational aspiration
Religion and Girls’ Occupational Aspirations 279

Table 12.1.  Coefficients of Ordinary Least Squares Regression of Percent-


Female of Occupational Aspiration on Religious Characteristics, Demographics,
Family Background, and Attitudes

Coefficients T-ratios
Teen’s religious affiliatione
Evangelical Protestant 1.92 0.87
Mainline Protestant 4.82 1.77
African American Protestant –0.18 0.05
Jewish –11.30* 1.98
Mormon 5.35 1.02
Other religious affiliation –3.01 0.78
No religious affiliation 2.78 0.84
Parent religious service attendance 0.31 0.61
Parent importance of faith 2.33** 3.08
Teen religious service attendance 1.02* 2.07
Teen private religiosity –0.07 0.38
Agreement with: “A working mother can have a warm and –1.33* 1.67
loving relationship with children.”
Agreement with: “Better if a man earns money and woman 1.86** 2.73
takes care of home and family.”
Ideal age of marriage –0.51* 2.02
Number of children teen wishes to have 1.90** 2.90
Parent educationc
Some college 0.30 0.15
Received BA/BS –3.99 1.54
Graduate/professional schooling –1.96 0.67
Unknown –2.16 0.52
Family incomed
150% to 250% of poverty line –2.83 1.19
250% to 400% of poverty line –3.15 1.21
Over 400% of poverty line –4.00 1.31
Income missing –1.74 0.44
Grade point average –4.94*** 3.72
Constant 82.84*** 8.94
N 1039
adj. R2 0.078
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001; one-tailed tests
a
  Reference category is “Age 13”
b
  Reference category is “White”
c
Reference category is “High school graduate”
d
Reference category is “Less than 150% of poverty line”
e
Reference category is “Catholic”
280 Pearce and Hardie

of Catholic girls. In analyses not shown here, we ran models using other
religious groups as the reference group, and Jewish girls’ aspirations were
different than all other religious groups, but no other differences between
other religious groups were statistically significant. In a full regression
model including parent and child measures of religiosity, the daughter’s
public practice of religiosity is the more significant type of religiosity.
The more often a girl attends religious services herself, the more female-
dominated occupation she prefers. Of course, parent and child religious
importance and parent religious service attendance are correlated with the
daughter’s attendance level, so in a sense, the various dimensions of reli-
giosity are working through the daughter’s attendance. On average, a one
unit increase in religious service attendance is associated with a 1 percent
increase in the percent female for her occupational aspiration. Girls’ own
importance of faith does not seem related to the type of occupational aspi-
ration they hold, even when this is the only measure of religiosity in the
model (results not shown).
Our findings suggest that attitudes toward family life are mechanisms
through which religion influences girls’ occupational aspirations. Girls who
disagree that a working mother can establish a warm and loving relation-
ship with her children, agree that men should be responsible for breadwin-
ning and women should take care of the home, those who desire to marry
earlier, and those who desire more children have occupational aspirations
that are significantly more female-dominated than their counterparts. In
the progression of models not presented here, the addition of each addi-
tional attitude about family life shrinks the size of the coefficients for par-
ent importance of religiosity and youth religious service attendance. These
dimensions of religiosity still remain statistically significant, suggesting they
have their own independent relationship with occupational aspirations,
but part of those relationships are explained by more religious girls, with
more religious parents having ideas about women investing more heavily in
housework, childcare, childbearing, and marrying earlier.
To get an overall sense of how related religiosity is to girls’ occupational
aspirations, we prepared predicted probabilities for three different types of
youth and have displayed these in Figure 12.2. Girls with lower attendance
and importance of faith average occupational aspirations at about the level
of 58 percent female, which are jobs like being an editor, a bartender, or a
real estate broker. At the other end, girls with high religious involvement
and importance of faith average occupational aspirations that are about 72
percent female, like waitresses, insurance underwriters, and cardiovascular
technicians.
Religion and Girls’ Occupational Aspirations 281

Low Religious Mean Religious High Religious

Attendance & Faith Attendance & Faith Attendance & Faith

57.8 % Female 60.8% Female 71.9% Female

(E.g., Editor, bartender, (E.g., Food preparation (E.g., Waitress, insurance


real estate broker) worker, retail sales, public underwriter, cardiovascular
relations) technician)

Figure 12.2.  Predicted percent-female in occupation to which a female respondent


aspires at low, mean, and high levels of youth religiosity.

The descriptive and statistical analyses presented here offer a snapshot


of the relationships between religious experiences and beliefs, attitudes
and family plans, and occupational aspirations for girls. Next, we turn to
qualitative data from semi-structured interviews for more evidence regard-
ing how religion may shape aspirations. First, we describe our sample and
methods and then we report our findings.

Semi-structured Interview Data


To further explore the relationship between religiosity and occupational
aspirations in a more inductive manner, we draw on qualitative data col-
lected through an approach called Systematic Anomalous Case Analysis
(Pearce, 2002) in which a regression model is used to produce anomalous
cases and a set of non-anomalous comparison cases that can be reinter-
viewed in a more open-ended format so that additional themes that will
help explain the development of occupational aspirations can emerge.
In this case, we took the regression model presented here (Table 12.1)
and ran regression diagnostics to obtain values for residuals, leverage
scores, Cooks Distance, and DFFITS. These values indicate how well or
not well individual cases fit along a regression line and how much influ-
ence a case has on regression results. For example, if a participant’s sur-
vey responses predict that she should hold an aspiration for a job that is
about 80 percent female, but her reported aspiration is 20 percent female,
282 Pearce and Hardie

she would be considered an outlying case. Using our diagnostic values,


we created a list of all girls in our sample between the ages of 16–18 who
were outliers. From that list we randomly selected 11 cases. Next we picked
11 non-anomalous cases who best matched our 11 anomalous cases on
age, race, occupational aspiration, religiosity, and GPA. Of the 22 eligible
cases, eight were interviewed, two refused to participate, and twelve were
unreachable because of moves (and family members refusing to share new
contact information) or no one answering the phone. In total, five anoma-
lous cases and three comparison cases were interviewed in eight different
states.
Each interview started with a pile sort activity. Participants were handed
a pile of cards that each listed an occupation.4 The first sorting activity was
very open. Participants were asked to sort the cards into any piles that
made sense to them. The rule was just that every card had to go in a pile,
and there had to be more than one pile. If they had not done so in the ini-
tial activity, they were then asked to sort the cards into “jobs they desired”
and “jobs they did not desire.” Next they were asked to sort the cards into
“jobs suited for women” and “jobs suited for men.” Following each sorting
activity, the participants were asked to discuss why certain cards ended
up in the piles that they did. These sorting activities gave us data on how
the participants saw various occupations, and served as a very nice ice
breaker to get them talking. The rest of the interview was about their lives
and operated by providing an open-ended life history calendar that inter-
viewer or participant could write on to map out key aspects of their lives,
including their aspirations and religious lives over time. All participants
consented to have the interviews audio recorded, and the recordings were
subsequently transcribed into typed transcripts stripped of all identifi-
ers. Both authors and two graduate student research assistants have been
involved in the inductive coding and discussion of emerging themes from
the transcripts.

Interview Findings
Gender Identity
The most striking theme emerging from our interviews was the extent to
which girls expressed their career aspirations as an extension of how femi-
nine (or masculine) they viewed themselves or even how feminine (or not)
others viewed them. Mandy, a young girl who aspires to be a pilot and
police officer, demonstrates this theme well. Mandy, a 17-year-old living
in a working class neighborhood in the Midwest, was tall, thin, and blond,
Religion and Girls’ Occupational Aspirations 283

wearing jeans, a white blouse, tennis shoes, and a turquoise necklace. She
wore little make-up and carried an army green canvas purse. At the time of
the 2005 NSYR survey, Mandy said she hoped to be a pilot when she was 35
years old, an occupation in which 95 percent of employees are male. Mandy
likely registered as an anomalous case because her mother finds religion to
be extremely important, Mandy attended religious services at least three
times a month, and Mandy reported the ideal age at marriage to be 20 years
old (all characteristics related to aspiring to more female-dominated jobs);
however, Mandy aspires to a very male-dominated occupation.
At the time of the interview, Mandy was still hoping to be a pilot at the
encouragement of her father who takes her to a small airport for free plane
rides and bought her private lessons for her last birthday. She also consid-
ered becoming a police officer at the encouragement of her grandfather,
or a realtor based on discussions with one of her parents’ friends. During
the pile sort activity, Mandy placed the “pilot” and “police officer” cards
in the “best suited for men” pile. The interviewer asked, “So, the two jobs
that you are most interested in ended up in the male pile. That’s interesting.
Have you thought about that before?” Mandy replied, “Yeah, how I like,
how everybody sees me as just one of the guys.” The interviewer follows up
on this theme later and Mandy says,
I would always, like girls would sit on the side and watch the guys play basket-
ball, but I’d be the one that would kind of like go and play, and I’d try to beat
‘em you know. And try to show them that I was just another one of the guys, or
maybe even better. And my boyfriend kind of finds that threatening because he
knows this summer I’m probably gonna, because I’m living in a new neighbor-
hood, and there’s like a park right down the street from me. So I told him I was
interested in trying to get to know people again. And he’s like, “So you’re gonna
try to get to know guys?” He’s always saying, “You’re always trying to be just
another one of the guys.” And, my friends are saying that too, because they’re
not like big into sports.
A few times in the interview, Mandy talks about relating better to her father
than her mother. Mandy’s father is not as religiously active as her mother
who insists Mandy attend church, and she reports sharing her father’s skep-
ticism of organized religion. When describing what jobs do not appeal to
her, Mandy clearly states multiple times that she does not like children as
a condition that ruled her out for typically female-dominated jobs such as
teaching. She also makes a point of saying it’s her boyfriend that remem-
bers the day they started dating, not her, that he’s “clingy” and he wants
to move in together soon and get married some day, but she would rather
have her independence. She says people tell her she gets along well with
284 Pearce and Hardie

her boyfriend because he is more feminine and she is more masculine. She
describes herself as a unique girl, because she likes to “push the limits” of
what a girl is expected to do.
Other girls who are anomalous cases described themselves as possess-
ing stereotypically female characteristics. Caitlin is endlessly teased for
being overweight, unattractive, and unable to read at grade level. She
lives in a small town and attends a small public high school where she
says all the female teachers grew up and were cheerleaders in that same
town. She feels that she has nothing in common with them and that they
are mean to her. Although her lower GPA and desire for seven children
predict that she would be more likely to aspire toward a female-dom-
inated occupation, Caitlin wants to do something in the field of agri-
culture, working with farmers, generally a more male-dominated field.
Although Caitlin does not directly discuss feeling like “one of the guys”
as Mandy does, a similar theme of not fitting the expectations of what a
girl in her community is like may contribute to her thinking about her
future, or her possible careers in terms of something that bends gender
norms as well.
Frome and colleagues (2006) find that girls who aspire to male-domi-
nated jobs often adjust their aspirations to more female-typical occupations
later in adolescence. This was particularly true of girls who placed less value
on physical science and expressed a desire for family friendly work, sug-
gesting that girls tend to align their aspirations with what society expects
of women. What some of our anomalous cases suggest is that girls who
already identify as different from the average girl, like Mandy and Caitlin,
may be more comfortable retaining aspirations for occupations not typi-
cally held by women.
Religion is a cultural force often implicated as a social institution that
reinforces patriarchal aspects of society, such as promoting ideas of men
being the heads of households, the breadwinner-housewife model of fam-
ily organization, and glorifying women’s femininity (Edgell, 2006; Glass
& Jacobs, 2005). Lower levels of religious exposure and participation as is
the case for Caitlin, and limited internalization as is the case for Mandy,
leave more opportunity for girls to imagine themselves working in jobs that
are not as female-dominated. Therefore, it may be that when parents value
religion and girls are religiously active, religion serves as a gender social-
izing force that leads to a preference for more female-dominated occupa-
tions. Religion may shape what a girl sees as possible for her, her “possible
careers.”
Religion and Girls’ Occupational Aspirations 285

Promoting Altruism
We also interviewed girls our regression analysis predicted would aspire
to more male-dominated occupations given their GPA and family socio-
economic background. For example, Sara, Rachel, and PJ aspired to be a
dancer, a surgical nurse, and physical therapist, respectively. None of these
girls have particularly religious families, nor are they religiously active, yet
they all three share something in common with Anita and Bethany, two
girls with religiously active families who aspire to be an elementary school
teacher and a physical therapist, respectively. They all place high value on
helping and caring for others.
One of us arranged to meet Anita at a local bookstore in a western state,
and she arrived 10 minutes early. She came right over and, with a bright,
friendly smile, asked, “Are you [Interviewer’s name]?” The field notes about
the interview mention, “In all my interactions with Anita up until the inter-
view, and during the interview, she was very cheery and friendly, always
agreeable, cooperative, and extremely polite. She seemed a bit nervous
at first, but was quite willing to answer any question, expanded nicely on
her answers, and didn’t overtalk.” Going through the pile sort activities,
there was a great deal of overlap between the pile of jobs she could see
herself doing and jobs that she thought were best suited for women. Also,
she explained that occupations such as being an artist, a social worker, or
a physical therapist are good jobs for women, because women have more
compassion than men. In terms of her own aspirations, perfectly match-
ing what she had reported during the NSYR survey, Anita said, “I really,
really, really want to be a teacher. I love working with kids.” For her senior
year high school project, Anita designed a peer counseling program for her
school. She clearly values having compassion for others and providing assis-
tance and sees these as especially appropriate values and job characteristics
for women. Some of this may have come from her regular involvement in a
conservative Protestant church with her family where many of the women
are stay-at-home mothers or work as teachers or nurses.
Similar to Anita, Bethany immediately cited her love of helping people
in explaining why she had picked certain cards as jobs she would like to
have. “Well, with the exception of the lawyer, a lot of these jobs deal with
the medical profession. That’s something I really am interested in. Just help-
ing people.” Also similar to Anita, Bethany is heavily involved in a school
club that promotes breaking down cliques and peer pressure at school. It
involves a peer counseling component. Bethany lights up when she talks
about this club and “being the change” she wants to see at her school.
286 Pearce and Hardie

From these cases and others, we see that when girls embrace the stereo-
typically female characteristic of valuing altruism, this shows through in
how they evaluate a range of careers and pick one to aspire toward. To the
extent that religious institutions promote altruism, this is likely a mecha-
nism for how religion helps shape girls’ occupational aspirations.

Final Thoughts
This chapter provides evidence that girls who are not Jewish, and who are
religiously active themselves, aspire to more female-dominated occupa-
tions. This is after controlling for family socioeconomic differences and
girls’ scholastic performance. This influence of religion seems to oper-
ate through attitudes about women needing to prioritize family care and
child rearing over career pursuits that translate to desires for earlier mar-
riage and a larger family size. In addition, it is likely that non-Jewish reli-
gious involvement promotes identification with stereotypically female
characteristics and imagining a future involving what society defines as
more female-typical jobs. Religious institutions especially promote altru-
ism and service, which may make occupations involving care-work (e.g.,
teaching, nursing, or other medical careers) more desirable. Altogether,
these findings suggest that religion can play a key role in shaping the
“possible careers” girls imagine for themselves. Although rarely studied
before in relation to girls’ occupational aspirations, it appears that reli-
gion is an important cultural force contributing to the paths girls set out
for themselves.
Given findings from the qualitative data presented here on the essen-
tial role of gender identity, future work should draw on data that measures
aspects of gender identity more richly, especially variance across cultural
groups that might explain differences in the types of jobs toward which girls
aspire. This would allow for testing of the extent to which gender socializa-
tion is a key mechanism for the influence of religion on career aspirations.
In addition, ethnographic studies of religious institutions and families or
girls’ involvement within them will better reveal the practices and messages
conveying aspects of gender identity that channel girls’ aspirations. This
type of work has great potential to contribute to the literature on adolescent
aspirations in general.
Girls’ occupational aspirations are parts of their “possible selves”
(Oyserman & James, 2009). They serve as guides for investment in edu-
cation and the development of plans for achieving their goals. Although
not everyone ends up achieving the specific goals set out in adolescence,
Religion and Girls’ Occupational Aspirations 287

they are unlikely to overachieve the level of those goals. Therefore, an


essential step in identifying the sources of gender inequality in occupa-
tional status is understanding how girls set their aspirations in adoles-
cence. The evidence we present here supports the notion that cultural
institutions such as religion, and the values promoted within them, play
a role in what girls imagine is possible and preferable. It is not just a girl’s
family resources and her abilities that inform her future career plans,
but the cultural contexts in which she has been socialized about what is
preferable for women.

Notes

1. See Beyerlein (2004) for interesting findings regarding the differences in educational
outcomes for Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestants.
2. We follow Steensland et al. (2000) in constructing these categories, which these
authors found useful in identifying distinct religious traditions and predicting reli-
gious, political, and social attitudes. We added the Mormon category, given the num-
ber of congregants reported in this study and the distinctiveness of their religious
traditions.
3. Given that we only had income given in $10,000 categories, we came as close to these
figures as possible. The exact groupings were as follows: 0 dollars to 155% of poverty
line, 155% to 258% of poverty line, 258% to 413% of poverty line, and over 413% of
poverty line.
4. Most occupations on the cards came from a list of the top 20 aspirations for NSYR
female respondents, but we also added cards with the specific aspirations of our eight
participants if they did not fall on the top 20 list.

References

Beyerlein, K. (2004). Specifying the impact of conservative Protestantism on educa-


tional attainment. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43(4), 505–518.
Campbell, R. T. (1983). Status attainment research: End of the beginning or beginning
of the end? Sociology of Education, 56(1), 47–62.
Chang, E. S., Chen, C., Greenberger, E., Dooley, D., & Heckhausen, J. (2006). What do
they want in life? The life goals of a multi-ethnic, multi-generational sample of high
school seniors. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 35(3), 321–332.
Correll, S. J. (2001). Gender and the career choice process: The role of biased self-
­assessments. American Journal of Sociology, 106(6), 1691–1730.
Davis, S. N., & Pearce, L. D. (2007). Adolescents’ work-family gender ideologies and
educational expectations. Sociological Perspectives, 50(2), 249–271.
Denton, M. L. (2004). Gender and marital decision making: Negotiating religious iden-
tity and practice. Social Forces, 82(3), 1151–1180.
Eccles, J. S. (1994). Understanding women’s educational and occupational choices.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18(4), 585–609.
288 Pearce and Hardie

Eccles, J. S., Vida, M. N., & Barber, B. (2004). The relation of early adolescents’ college
plans and both academic ability and task-value beliefs to subsequent college enroll-
ment. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 24(1), 63–77.
Edgell, P. (2006). Religion and family in a changing society. Princeton University Press
Series in Cultural Sociology.
Fan, P., & Marini, M. M. (2000). Influences on gender-role attitudes during the transi-
tion to adulthood. Social Science Research, 29(2), 258–283.
Frome, P. M., Alfeld, C. J., Eccles, J. S., & Barber, B. L. (2006). Why don’t they want a
male-dominated job? An investigation of young women who changed their occu-
pational aspirations. Educational Research and Evaluation: An International Journal
on Theory and Practice, 12(4), 359–372.
Glass, J., & Jacobs, J. (2005). Childhood religious conservatism and adult attainment
among black and white women. Social Forces, 83, 555–579.
Glass, J., & Kanellakos, L. (2006). Religious conservatism and women’s market behavior
following marriage and childbirth. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 611–629.
Glick, J. E., & White, M. J. (2003). Post-secondary school participation of immigrant and
native youth: The role of familial resources and educational expectations. Social
Science Research, 33, 272–299.
Glick, P. (1991). Trait-based and sex-based discrimination in occupational prestige,
occupational salary, and hiring. Sex Roles, 25(5/6), 351–378.
Hitlin, S. (2006). Parental influences on children’s values and aspirations: Bridging
two theories of social class and socialization. Sociological Perspectives, 49(1),
25–46.
Lips, H. M. (2004). The gender gap in possible selves: Divergence of academic self-views
among high school and university students. Sex Roles, 50(5–6), 357–371.
Mahaffy, K. A., & Ward, S. K. (2002). The gendering of adolescents’ childbearing and
educational plans: Reciprocal effects and the influence of social context. Sex Roles,
46(11/12), 403–417.
Marini, M. M., Fan, P., Finley, E., & Beutel, A. M. (1996). Gender and job values.
Sociology of Education, 69(1), 49–65.
Marini, M. M., & Greenberger, E. (1978). Sex differences in occupational aspirations
and expectations. Work and Occupations, 5(2), 147–178.
Massey, E. K., Gebhardt, W. A., & Garnefski, N. (2008). Adolescent goal content and
pursuit: A review of the literature from the past 16 years. Developmental Review,
28(4), 421–460.
Muller, C., & Ellison, C. G. (2001). Religious involvement, social capital, and adoles-
cents’ academic progress: Evidence from the national education longitudinal study
of 1988. Sociological Focus, 34(2), 155–183.
Murrell, A. J., Frieze, I. H., & Frost, J. L. (1991). Aspiring to careers in male-and female-
dominated professions: A study of black and white college women. Psychology of
Women Quarterly, 15(1), 103–126.
Nash, S. C. (1979). Sex role as a mediator of intellectual functioning. In M. A. Wittig &
A. C. Peterson (Eds.), Sex-related differences in cognitive functioning (pp. 263–302).
New York: Academic Press.
Nurmi, J. E. (1994). The development of future-orientation in a life-span context. In
Z. Zaleski (Ed.), Psychology of future orientation (pp. 20–616). Lublin, Poland:
Wydawnictwo Towarzystwa Naukowego Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego.
Religion and Girls’ Occupational Aspirations 289

Oyserman, D., & James, L. (2009). Possible selves: From content to process. In K.
Markman, W. M. P. Klein, & J. A. Suhr (Eds.), The handbook of imagination and
mental stimulation (pp. 373–394). New York: Psychology Press.
Pearce, L. D. (2002). Integrating survey and ethnographic methods for systematic
anomalous case analysis. Sociological Methodology, 32(1), 103–132.
Pearce, L. D., & Denton, M. L. (2011). A faith of their own: Stability and change in the
religiosity of American adolescents. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pearce, L. D., & Thornton, A. (2007). Religious identity and family ideologies in the
transition to adulthood. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69(5), 1227–1243.
Phinney, J. S., Baumann, K., & Blanton, S. (2001). Life goals and attributions for
expected outcomes among adolescents from five ethnic groups. Hispanic Journal of
Behavioral Sciences, 23(4), 363–377.
Ridgeway, C. L. (2002). Gender, status and leadership. Journal of Social Issues, 57(4),
637–655.
Schoon, I. (2001). Teenage job aspirations and career attainment in adulthood: A 17-year
follow-up study of teenagers who aspired to become scientists, health professionals
and engineers. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 25, 124–132.
Seginer, R. (2003). Adolescent future orientation: An integrated cultural and ecologi-
cal perspective. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, Unit 6. Retrieved from
http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol6/iss1/5
Sewell, W. H., Haller, A. O., & Portes, A. (1969). The educational and early occupational
attainment process. American Sociological Review, 34(1), 82–92.
Shu, X., & Marini, M. M. (1998). Gender-related change in occupational aspirations.
Sociology of Education, 71(1), 43–67.
Shu, X., & Marini, M. M. (2008). Coming of age in changing times: Occupational aspira-
tions of American youth in 1966–80. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility,
26(1), 29–55.
Smith, C., & Denton, M. L. (2005). Soul searching: The religious and spiritual lives of
American teenagers. New York: Oxford University Press.
Steensland, B., Park, J. Z., Regnerus, M., Robinson, L. D., Wilcox, W. B., & Woodberry,
R. D. (2000). The measure of American religion: Toward improving the state of the
art. Social Forces, 79(1), 291–318.
Teachman, J. D., & Paasch, K. (1998). The family and educational aspirations. Journal of
Marriage and Family, 60, 704–714.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2006). Women in the labor force: A databook (Report
996). Washington, DC: Chao, Elaine L. Retrieved July 5, 2006 from http://www.bls.
gov/cps/wlf-databook-2006.pdf.
Weisgram, E. S., Bigler, R. S., & Liben, L. S. (2010). Gender, values, and occupational
interests among children, adolescents, and adults. Child Development, 81(3),
778–796.
Yoder, J. D. (1994). Looking beyond numbers: The effects of gender status, job pres-
tige and occupational gender-typing on tokenism processes. Social Psychology
Quarterly, 57(2), 150–159.
13 First Romantic Relationships of Adolescents
from Different Religious Groups in Israel
and Germany

Bernhard Nauck and Anja Steinbach

Abstract
Based on an extensive literature review on the relationship between reli-
gious affiliation, religiosity and engagement in romantic relationships in
early adolescence, the chapter deals with first romantic relationships on
the basis of survey data of dyads of mothers and their children between
15–17 years of age from Germany and Israel, in which seven culturally dif-
ferent social groups are included, namely native Germans, German repatri-
ates, Turkish immigrants, and Russian Jewish immigrants in Germany, and
native Israelis, Russian Jewish immigrants and Israeli Arabs in Israel. Thus,
the sample comprises groups of three religions (Christians, Jews, Muslims)
and from four regions of origin (Germany, Russia, Turkey, Israel). After
an exploration on level differences between these groups with regard to
involvement of adolescents in romantic relationships, the subsequent analy-
sis investigates to which extent this involvement is structured by normative
beliefs and influenced by intergenerational transmission, the relationship
between mothers and adolescents, and experiences, preferences, and com-
petencies of the adolescents.

The establishment of first romantic relationships is one of the central and


almost universal developmental tasks of adolescence, in which close asym-
metric intergenerational relationships are complemented by close symmet-
ric relationships (usually) to the other sex.1 In general, the more universal
and the more important a developmental tasks for a respective society is,
the more likely it is that this developmental task is normatively regulated
and subject of social control. Moreover, if a developmental task remains
stable in its importance and universality over time, it is also very likely that

290
First Romantic Relationships 291

its normative regulation is deeply rooted in culture and thereby backed by


religious beliefs.
Romantic relationships have always been closely related to repro-
ductive behavior, both on the societal level and on the individual level.
On the societal level, it refers to the continuity of a sociocultural group
based on fertility and of the transmission of culture in general as well
as religious beliefs in specific. On the individual level, it refers to the
transmission of social status and to the social integration of family and
kinship systems. Accordingly, as far as this relationship between roman-
tic relationships and social reproduction is close, it is more than obvious
that institutional regulations on the societal level as well as investments
in the social control of this developmental task on the side of the par-
ents are a fundamental part of the socialization of the offspring (Knafo
et al., 2009; Knafo & Schwartz, 2009; Trommsdorff, 2009). These norma-
tive regulations comprise how the establishment of the younger cohorts’
relationships are to be located within the life course, which forms of
institutionalization they require, and which levels of sexual intensity are
considered to be appropriate in these relationships. Thus, first romantic
relationships are an issue even in cases where these normative regula-
tions are comparably restrictive and such relationships are not tolerated
by the social environment.
At least throughout the last five decades and at least in the affluent wel-
fare societies, the connection between the establishment of first romantic
relationships and reproductive behavior has been significantly weakened,
based on technological inventions of effective birth control, changes in the
standard life course because of earlier puberty, extended phases of educa-
tion and intergenerational dependence and in the following, the separa-
tion of partnership, parenthood, housing, education, and occupation into
only loosely connected biographical trajectories. Accordingly, as long as
they are based on the consequences for the social reproduction, normative
regulations of romantic relationships like being with a “wrong” partner or
“untimely” have lost much of their legitimation.
The diffusion of knowledge about effective contraceptive methods and
about life course scripts, which separate romantic relationships from par-
enthood, has nowadays reached practically every individual worldwide.
However, this knowledge and these scripts may affect individuals in dif-
ferent positions to the ongoing social change and its respective speed and
various social settings may result in different reactions to it. The univer-
sality of this developmental task and the societal demand for normative
292 Nauck and Steinbach

regulations and the changing conditions make first romantic relationships


an interesting subject for cross-cultural comparisons.

Religious Affiliation, Religiosity and Engagement in


Romantic Relationships
Given the importance of first romantic relationships as an individual devel-
opmental task and as a social-normative, strongly regulated part of life
courses, it is interesting to note, however, that the body of empirical knowl-
edge is extremely scarce regarding the relationship between religious affil-
iation, religiosity, and the development of romantic relationships in youth
and early adolescence. Roehlkepartain et al. (2006: 3) note in their decade
review that less than one percent of articles in the leading developmental
psychology journals were dedicated to religious or spiritual development of
children or adolescents. Although faith development theory claims a devel-
opmental coincidence of “sexual changes brought on by adolescence” and
“revolutions in cognitive functioning and interpersonal perspective taking”
(Fowler & Dell, 2006: 39), mechanisms to interrelate both processes still
seem to be lacking, as do assumptions about the interrelation between the
content of specific belief systems, as provided by the respective religion, the
context within which these beliefs are transmitted, and the development of
intimate relationships. With regard to context, Oser, Scarlett and Bucher
(2006: 977) state that “family is the most powerful influence on children’s
religious and spiritual development” and that parents’ (and especially
mothers’) influence in religious behavior is by far more powerful than in
other domains of life. They also note that, when treating religiousness as an
independent variable, research evidence exists that it has positive effects on
well-being and on coping with critical life events (Oser, Scarlett & Bucher,
2006: 982ff.), but provides no results, which may shed light on the relation-
ship between religiosity (in different religious affiliations) and developmen-
tal tasks such as entering into intimate relationships.
Results for the newly developed adolescent religious coping scale (Bjorck
et al., 2010) provide evidence that religious coping is positively related to
emotional functioning and general life satisfaction, even after controlling
for relevant factors, and it is accompanied by increased parental support,
but “the sample was Christian, and findings cannot be generalized to ado-
lescents from other faith groups” (Bjorck et al., 2010: 357). However, studies
by French et al. (2008; Chapter 6 in this volume) on Muslim adolescents
in Indonesia point in the same direction. They also find for their Muslim
sample that religious involvement is positively related to a set of outcomes,
First Romantic Relationships 293

such as peer group status, academic achievement, prosocial behavior and


self-esteem. Studies of King and Furrow (2004) as well as Lim and Putnam
(2010) have identified an important mediating factor on how religious
participation influences moral outcomes. They demonstrate that religious
practices may not in themselves increase moral orientation toward altru-
ism, empathy, or life satisfaction but only if they are embedded in sup-
portive and trusting relationships (King & Furrow, 2004: 709). “Religious
youths are more likely to interact with, trust, and share similar perspectives
with a nonfamilial adult than are those who are only sometimes involved or
not at all involved in religious activities” (King & Furrow, 2004: 710), with
no differences between the observed ethnic groups and religious affiliations
in their U.S. sample of adolescents. More specifically, a study by Bengtson et
al. (2009) reveals that not only parents, but also grandparents are important
transmitters of religious beliefs, having an independent additive effect to
that of parents. Their study also suggests that intergenerational transmis-
sion depends largely on the congruence of the transmitted values with the
situational societal conditions, suggesting “that when researchers examine
the intergenerational transmission of religious beliefs, it is important to also
consider the content of those beliefs, in particular their proscriptions and
rules for social behavior” (Bengtson et al., 2009: 341).
As differences in religious affiliation in adolescent populations in mod-
ern societies are in most cases the result of regional or international migra-
tion, a specific context effect on the relationship between religion and
involvement in romantic relationships is the belonging to an ethnic and
migrant minority, which is typically characterized by higher levels of reli-
giosity within a largely secularized environment. In such a situation, two
counteracting forces are to be considered (Nauck, 2001a): On the one
hand, increased social contacts to the receiving society (in the kindergar-
ten, at school, in vocational training) may result in higher levels of sec-
ularization of the second migrant generation as compared to the (religious)
migrants themselves. On the other hand, the minority situation may result
in increased intergenerational solidarity and increased efforts of the paren-
tal first migrant generation for intergenerational transmission of (religious)
values and for social control and surveillance of their offspring, in order
to maintain the minority culture over generations. Accordingly, if the first
force prevails, assimilation to the secularized context is most likely whereas
if the second force prevails, high levels of religiosity may be maintained or
even strengthened in the ethnic minority situation.
Studies comparing intergenerational relationships in Turkish migrant
families with those of native members of the receiving society Germany
294 Nauck and Steinbach

and of natives in Turkey show that parents in the migrant families are more
likely to perform an authoritarian-controlling parenting style than German
or native Turkish families (Nauck, 1989). Moreover, co-orientation and
similarities of perceptions and attitudes between generations are higher in
migrant families than in native families of the country of origin (Nauck,
1995; 1997). A study with a similar design, comparing the levels of reli-
giosity of adolescents from the society of origin Turkey, Turkish second
generation migrants and adolescents from the receiving society Belgium
revealed that Belgian adolescents showed lower and declining religiosity
with age, whereas Turkish and Turkish Belgian adolescents were more reli-
gious regardless of age, but religiosity was even more accentuated in Turkish
Belgian adolescents as compared with Turkish adolescents in Turkey
(Güngör, Bornstein & Phalet, in press). A complementary study on inter-
generational transmission of religious beliefs in Muslim migrant families
from Turkey and Morocco in Belgium shows that religious transmission is
generally effective for religious identification, beliefs, and practices in both
groups, but most effective in the Turkish Belgian groups and when indi-
vidual orientations toward heritage culture maintenance was high; host cul-
ture adoption played a minor role (Güngör, Fleischmann & Phalet, 2011).
The study thus confirms findings from Germany on high maintenance of
religious orientations in Muslim second generation immigrants (Diehl &
König, 2009).
Besides minority membership, the act of migration also has a situa-
tional component, as it results in losses in social capital and social integra-
tion (Myers, 1999), which may also influence both individual religiosity
and the opportunities to engage in romantic relationships. As migration
is generally considered to be a stressful event that activates specific coping
strategies (Berry, 1997; Nauck, 2008), this may also include religiosity as a
source of coping, which may be activated close to the migration event itself
but may lose its importance over time, the more the acculturation pro-
cess has progressed. Migration also shapes and limits the market of avail-
able partners for romantic relationships, which, in turn, may have effects
on religious orientations. Whereas at the beginning of a migration cycle
partners of the same origin (and the same religious affiliation) are scarce
and result in high rates of mixed religious partnerships and marriages and
hence a lowered religious commitment, opportunities for finding a part-
ner of the same religious affiliation increase in later stages of the migra-
tion cycle, which then makes religious commitment a salient signal on
the increasing intra-ethnic partnership market (Nauck, 2007a; Baykara-
Krumme & Fuß, 2009).
First Romantic Relationships 295

Strong intergenerational transmission of religiously based values may


also have an indirect effect on the entry into first romantic relationships in
youth and early adolescence. Gans, Silverstein and Lowenstein (2009: 188)
have comparatively analyzed the influence of religiosity on intergenera-
tional support for Christian individuals in Europe and for Jews in Israel and
are able to verify the same model for the included five societies of Norway,
England, Germany, Spain and Israel. They argue that “doctrinal aspects of
religion are best summarized by the dictate of the Old Testament to honor
one’s father and mother, a filial prescription made in various forms by virtu-
ally all religions of the world. Individuals who are more involved in practic-
ing religion through both the public sphere (participation in religious
services) and the private sphere (family prayers, personal salience of reli-
gion) are more likely to be exposed to messages that promote strong family
commitment.” It is then “likely that religiosity indirectly enhances support-
ive behavior by strengthening intergenerational cohesion” (Gans, Silverstein
& Lowenstein, 2009: 188) and at the same time provides less opportunities
and less normative support for engaging in romantic relationships.
In a longitudinal study of white Christian adolescents in the United
States, Laflin, Wang, and Barry (2008) found that adolescents with low
religious involvement had a more than twice higher likelihood to engage
in a sexual relationship within the observed one year. However, this effect
was only significant for boys, but not for girls. In their national representa-
tive cross-sectional study for the United States, Manlove et al. (2008) were
able to identify some mechanisms, which explain the relationship between
religiosity and sexual behavior. They found a direct relationship, indicat-
ing a lower level of sexual activity for adolescents from religious parental
homes, but also two indirect effects: namely, a higher level of social control
and surveillance over these adolescents by their parents and less contacts
to deviant peer groups. Whereas surveillance was not predictive for girls,
it reduced the probability of early sexual activities of boys significantly.
Differences between religious affiliations were not included in the analysis
of this study.
Empirical evidence on religious affiliation is especially scarce, because
most of the studies on adolescent sexual behavior in Western societies tend
to lump non-Christian religions together to a residual category (“other”),
so that results are generally reported for different Christian confessions
only. In their two-decade review, Rostosky et al. (2004: 687) report consis-
tent results from several studies based on different data sources, according
to which Catholic and “fundamentalist” Protestant youth are more likely
to delay sexual activity than “mainstream” Protestants, but note that the
296 Nauck and Steinbach

mechanisms behind these results are still unclear, i.e., whether this may
be attributed to different contents of the religious message or on different
levels of social control. They conclude “that the available evidence supports
that religiosity does delay sexual debut. These findings are more frequent
and consistent for White females and less so for White males. Relatively
few studies have examined this question with adequate samples of racial
and ethnic minorities. The few studies that have, however, have found con-
siderable consistency across female adolescents of differing racial or eth-
nic backgrounds” (Rostosky et al., 2004: 691). They also note as a major
deficiency of the current state of research that sexual activity is not con-
textualized in general strategies of partnership seeking and romantic rela-
tionships: “An examination of the influence of religiosity on the initiation,
maintenance, and quality of the romantic relationships of adolescents is yet
to be undertaken. Although most sexual decision making occurs within
the context of romantic relationships, none of the longitudinal data sets
included an assessment and analysis of these important relational variables.
Moreover, the studies reviewed continue the tradition of exclusively focus-
ing on sexual intercourse while neglecting a wide range of sexual behaviors
that adolescents may use … Future studies should address these gaps, given
the importance of these contexts and behavioral strategies to adolescent
sexual health and psychosocial development” (Rostosky et al., 2004: 692).
The following analysis has investigated the impact of social change on
the life course transition to first romantic relationships in case of three reli-
gious groups in two different social contexts with varying speed of expe-
rienced social change. The two contexts were Israel and Germany, the
three religious groups were Christians, Jews, and Muslims, and the varying
speed of social change was captured by migration: in Germany, besides the
group of native Germans, a group of German repatriates from Russia, a
group of work migrants from Turkey, and a group of Jewish migrants from
Russia were included; in Israel, besides the group of native Jewish Israelis,
a group of Jewish repatriates from Russia and a group of Israeli Arabs were
included.
The general research question was in which way the belonging to a spe-
cific religious group influenced the life course transition to a first romantic
relationship in early adolescence. The theoretical mechanisms, which may
explain this relationship, are rather unclear, however. Because the belonging
to a religious group is normally not a matter of choice and thus of selectivity
according to personal traits or individual preferences, two main arguments
remain. Either specific forms of spirituality, related to the respective reli-
gion, may covary with specific habits, frames, and especially scripts of life,
First Romantic Relationships 297

which, in turn, result in preferences for the individual choices for roman-
tic relationships; in this case, differences between outcomes for religious
groups would be first of all driven by individual religiosity. Or, different
forms of social control, related to the respective religion, may covary with
different outcomes in romantic relationships; in this case, individual religi-
osity would be of minor importance, but the differences would be mainly
explained by the social and institutional structure, in which the adolescent
is embedded.
It is also unclear which influence the status of belonging to a (migrant)
minority has on the development of spirituality on the one hand and the
development of romantic relationships on the other hand. Two counterbal-
ancing theoretical mechanisms are here in force. On the one hand, minority
membership increases efforts of structure maintenance, which may result in
increased symbolic adherence to cultural roots, within which membership
to a religious group is of strategic importance. On the other hand, migra-
tion implies increased exposure to social change, non-redundant informa-
tion and alternative options, as well as loose-knit social networks, which
may result in rapid behavioral changes within the life course and across
generations. Moreover, exposure to migration itself may be seen as a criti-
cal life event, which may accelerate sexual behavior (South, Haynie & Bose,
2005) and thus has a direct effect on early romantic relationships.
The analysis empirically explored how these theoretical mechanisms
are related to possible differences between the three religious groups with
regard to first romantic relationships. After the description of the design of
the study and the obtained data set, the first part of the empirical analysis
describes the level differences between the religious groups with regard to
the involvement in romantic relationships of male and female adolescents.
The second part of the analysis investigates the effects of religiosity and
social control on this involvement.
Data for the analysis was gathered in a research project on “Regulation of
Developmental Transitions in Second Generation Immigrants in Germany
and Israel.” Among the studied transitions, the involvement of adolescents
in first romantic relationships was seen as a significant non-normative
transition in the life course, and significant differences between the stud-
ied groups were expected. The data collection took place between fall 2007
and summer 2008 and comprised dyads of mothers and their children
between 15–17 years of age from Germany and Israel. Seven culturally dif-
ferent social groups were included, namely native Germans, German repa-
triates, Turkish immigrants, and Russian Jewish immigrants in Germany,
and native Israelis, Russian Jewish immigrants, and Israeli Arabs in Israel.
298 Nauck and Steinbach

Thus, the study comprised groups of three religions (Christians, Jews,


Muslims), from four regions of origin (Germany, Russia, Turkey, Israel) in
two national contexts (Germany, Israel). The data was obtained by stan-
dardized, language-equivalent personal interviews with interviewers from
the respective ethnic group. Members of the language minorities had the
individual choice whether the interview was conducted in the minority
language (Turkish, Russian, Arabic) or in the majority language (German,
Hebrew).
In order to analyze intergenerational transmission and parental social
control, variables from both the interviews with the mothers and their ado-
lescent children were included in the analysis. Mothers from the religious
groups showed considerable differences:
–– The differences for the educational level, classified according to the inter-
national ISCED-scheme (UNESCO, 2006), were extreme between the
groups. Whereas 52 percent of the Turkish mothers and 21 percent of
the Israeli Arab mothers had no or only elementary schooling, the share
for the other groups was less than 5 percent. Tertiary education had 70
percent of the German Jewish mothers, 50 percent of the Jewish repatri-
ate mothers to Israel, 35 percent of the German repatriates, 30 percent of
the native German mothers and 18 percent of the native Israelis, but only
5 percent of the Israeli Arab and 1 percent of the Turkish mothers.
–– Differences for the mother’s self-perceived religiosity was also significant
(Eta = .54***), with the Israeli Arab mothers and the Turkish mothers
being the most religious and the German Jews and the Israeli repatriate
mothers being the least religious.
For the adolescents, age and gender was controlled for because the age dis-
tribution within the several groups differed significantly (Eta = .45***) and
because involvement in romantic relationships is strongly age-dependent,
and because gender and religiosity within the respective religious group
may interact. Besides belonging to one of the seven groups with their inher-
ent dimension of religious group, country of origin, and country of residence,
the following predictors were included: Self-esteem was included as a short-
ened 4-item scale (α = .80) of Rosenberg (1965) and used as a proxy for the
level of individuation of the adolescent, making him independent from the
direct influences of the parents. Self-efficacy was included as a 5-item scale
(α = .79) of Jerusalem and Schwarzer (1992), capturing the development of
own attitudes and behaviors despite possible social control. Perceived self-
disclosure was measured with a shortened 3-item scale (α = .65) of Kerr and
Stattin (2000). Perceived parental control was measured with a shortened
First Romantic Relationships 299

4-item scale (α = .70) of Kerr and Stattin (2000). The adolescent’s religiosity
was measured with a single item (“How religious are you?”) ranging from
(1) “not religious at all” to (5) “very religious.” Whereas no significant dif-
ferences between the religious groups were observed for self-esteem and
self-disclosure, moderate differences existed for self-efficacy of the adoles-
cents, with the second generation of Russian Jewish immigrants to Israel
showing the highest and the Russian Jewish immigrants to Germany show-
ing the lowest. The perceived social control of the parents was lowest for the
native German adolescents and highest for the Israeli Arabs. The variability
of religiosity between the seven groups was almost as high for the adoles-
cents (Eta = .52) as for the mothers (Eta = .54), with the Turkish adolescents
having the highest level of religiosity, followed by the native Israelis and
the Israeli Arabs, and with the Jewish immigrants both to Germany and
Israel showing the lowest level. Thus, whereas the religiosity level of Israeli
Arab adolescents, the native German adolescents, and the Jewish immi-
grant adolescents in Germany was markedly decreased in comparison to
their mother, it was slightly increased for the native Israeli and the Turkish
migrant adolescents.

Romantic Relationships
Two main areas within the domain of romantic relationships of adoles-
cents were studied: Partner preferences and the involvement in romantic
relationships. Descriptive results showed the differences between male and
female adolescents of the religious groups within their respective social set-
ting and controlling for their age.
Partner preferences: A multidimensional set of 11 characteristics that a
potential partner to the adolescent should possess, was provided, to which
the respondents were supposed to evaluate the “importance” of these char-
acteristics. An oblique factor analysis revealed three factors, explaining 56
percent of the variance. These findings can easily be interpreted in terms of
utility expectations toward potential partners within the theory of social
production functions (Lindenberg, 1990; Ormel et al., 1999; Nauck, 2001b;
2007b); that is, the specifically expected gratifications from romantic rela-
tionships. Therefore, the first factor was labeled “status expectations,” the
second factor was labeled “expectations of social approval,” and the third
factor was labeled “stimulation expectations.” These three factors were used
as factor scores in subsequent analyses.
When looking at the gender differences alone, the empirical analysis
revealed expected results: female adolescents had a higher preference for
300 Nauck and Steinbach

a romantic partner, who meets their status expectations (Beta = .20***),


whereas this dimension was the most unimportant for male adolescents.
The same difference occurred for expectations of social approval in a part-
nership, which was again significantly more important for female adoles-
cents (Beta = .15***). In reverse, stimulation expectations were slightly
higher for males, but the differences were far less marked (Beta = .07).
If the religious groups together with gender are compared, the small-
est, insignificant differences were obtained for the stimulation expectation,
which was always somewhat higher for males in all three religions, with
the Jews having the highest expectations in this regard, followed by the
Christians, whereas for the Muslim adolescents, this expectation was com-
parably unimportant. In all three religions, expectations of social approval
within a romantic relationship were more important for female adolescents
than for male adolescents, which was the predominant effect, but also with
a significantly different rank order between religions. It was most important
for the (female) Christian adolescents, followed by the Muslims, whereas it
was least important for the (male) Jewish adolescents. The most extreme
differences were found for status expectations toward a romantic partner.
These expectations were highest for the (female) Muslim adolescents and
lowest for the (male) Christian adolescents. Here, the predominant effect
resulted from the belonging to the respective religious group (Beta = .47),
but with an also relatively strong effect resulting from gender (Beta = .20).
To put results on religious differences into a nutshell, Christian adolescents
sought communication and behavioral confirmation in romantic rela-
tionships, Jews sought leisure sensation and physical attraction, whereas
Muslim adolescents were very much status seekers and looked for someone
who would be well-respected in their social environment.
Involvement in romantic relationships: With regard to the involvement of
the young adolescents in romantic relationships, they were asked whether
they ever had a romantic relationship and which kind of sexual activity was
ever involved in one of these relationships. Table 13.1 displays the respective
adjusted proportions for the males and females of the three religious groups,
controlled for the age of the respondents by means of a multiple classifica-
tion analysis (MCA). Additionally, it displays the results for an index of the
sexual intensity of the romantic relationship (cumulative for the first six
columns) in column 7 and for the satisfaction with the current partnership
situation in column 8. Moreover, it displays the Beta-coefficients for MCA’s
for gender and age alone, and for religion and age alone, respectively.
As a general result, there was monotonous decrease in the percentages
for all six categories from the experience of a romantic relationship over
Table 13.1.  Adjusted Proportions of Male (m) and Female (f) Adolescents with a Christian, Moslem and Jewish Background with
Partnership Experience (MCA)

Religion Partnership Holding Hands Kissing French Kissing Petting Intercourse Sexual Partnership
Experience (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent) Intensity Satisfaction
(percent) (mean) (mean)
Christian m 73.8 71.1 70.2 66.7 50.1 29.6 3,5 4,4
f 70.8 68.6 69.5 68.8 40.6 24.7 3,4 4,4
Muslim m 76.8 52.9 43.9 36.0 19.3 11.1 2,4 4,5
f 50.9 20.0 16.9 9.1 1.0 – 0,9 4,3
Jewish m 54.7 53.6 51.2 40.8 40.4 15.9 2,6 3,6
f 64.1 63.6 60.8 47.9 37.6 13.5 2,9 3,9
Beta1) .20*** .33*** .35*** .37*** .33*** .27*** .35*** .24***
Beta2) .06 .06 .04 .05 .09* .08 .07 .01
Beta3) .11*** .26*** .31*** .33*** .31*** .24*** .30*** .22***
1)
  Results for religion and gender, controlled for age;
2)
  Results for gender, controlled for age;
3)
  Results for religion, controlled for age

301
302 Nauck and Steinbach

“holding hands” to “petting” and “sexual intercourse” (exception: Christian


girls report slightly higher “kissing” frequencies than “holding hands”).
However, the level differences between these six groups were very signifi-
cant and to a large extent owing to the religious affiliation and to its interac-
tion with gender effects, whereas gender itself had a negligible effect, as the
comparison of the respective Beta-values revealed. This result justified the
construction of a cumulative index (column 7 in Table 13.1), showing that
the highest level of sexual intensity was to be observed for the Christian
religion, followed by the Jewish adolescents. Gender differences were rather
small for the Christian adolescents, with a majority having experience with
French kissing and petting in this age group and a quarter with sexual inter-
course. Gender differences were higher for the Jewish adolescents, with the
females showing more activity in romantic relationships than the males,
however, mostly in those with less sexual involvement. These differences
were accompanied by the lowest level of satisfaction with the partnership
situation for the Jewish male adolescents, followed by the female Jews.
Although the level of sexual intensity in romantic relationships between
the Christian adolescents and the Muslim adolescents differed most, their
level of satisfaction with this situation did not. In fact, the involvement
in romantic relationships of the Muslim youth showed a distinct pattern,
which was characterized by the following: strong differences between males
and females with regard to sexual activity in this age group, however, little
difference with regard to involvement in romantic relationships (77 percent
of the Muslim boys and 51 percent of the Muslim girls reported to have or
have had a romantic relationship, of which for them only a small fraction
was ever accompanied by the mildest form of body contact). Accordingly,
the “partnership experience” as such (Beta = .20) and the “satisfaction with
the partnership situation” (Beta = .24) showed the smallest differences
between the groups. Whether the reported plus on sexual activity on the
Muslim males side despite the general higher age of males in a romantic
relationship was because of the fact that the studied Muslim groups were
in a minority situation with partnership opportunities outside the own reli-
gious group (unlikely) or whether they result from experiences with sex-
ually hyperactive girls (unlikely), or whether they were owing to a gender
specific under- and/or over-reporting, could not be tested in this study.
The general pattern of differences with regard to sexual involvement in
romantic relationships between the Muslim group and the two others was
consistent with the findings on partner preferences: if status seeking and
acceptance of relationships by significant others was the predominant utility
expectation, then an early screening of the partnership market for suitable
First Romantic Relationships 303

partners was an efficient, satisfying strategy; however, sexual commitment


was delayed to an institutionalized relationship (marriage), which assures
the status gain. If, however, the search for communication and behavioral
confirmation in romantic relationships or the search for leisure sensation
and physical attraction was the predominant utility expectation toward
romantic partnerships, then higher levels of early sexual involvement was
an efficient strategy. However, as the level differences on satisfaction with
the partnership situation showed, this strategy seemed to be easier realized
for the Christian than for the (male) Jewish adolescents.

Religious Affiliation and Involvement in Romantic Relationships


Multivariate analyses revealed that the religious affiliation had a strong
effect on the sexual involvement of adolescents in romantic relationships,
with the Christian reference population showing the highest level. The
respective affiliation interacted with the gender of the respondent. For the
Muslim adolescents, a low level of sexual involvement in romantic relation-
ships referred only to the Muslim girls, but not to the Muslim boys. For the
Jewish adolescents, the reverse was true: within the same age bracket, Jewish
boys showed a rather low sexual involvement as compared to their female
counterparts. The individual level of religiosity had a significant negative
effect on the sexual involvement of adolescents in romantic relationships,
which seems to be a rather independent additive effect to religious affil-
iation, as an interaction term between religiosity and religious affiliation
showed no effect.
The respective country of origin and the country of residence had com-
paratively small effects on the involvement of adolescents in early roman-
tic relationships. Jewish immigrant adolescents showed a higher degree of
sexual involvement in romantic relationships than the native Jewish pop-
ulation in Israel. Stronger effects of the respective country of origin were
revealed for the Muslim adolescents. Muslims from Turkey in Germany
were significantly more sexually involved in romantic relationships than
the Arabic adolescents in Israel – whether this was because of the migrant
situation with its extended opportunities both for the provision of alterna-
tive scripts of the life course or for an extended partnership market, could
not be tested in this study. This finding is an indication that the culture of
the respective religious ethnic group operates to a large extent indepen-
dently from the respective location. Instead, it has to be noted that the effect
of individual religiosity on lowered sexual involvement in romantic rela-
tionships remained stable when religious affiliation, country of origin and
304 Nauck and Steinbach

Table 13.2.  Religious Affiliation, Partner Preferences, Intergenerational


Relationships and Involvement in Romantic Relationships of Adolescents

(1) (2) (3) Zero Order Correlation


Female .01 .03 .05 −.06
Muslim1) −.07 −.06 −.12* −.24**
Jewish1) −.20*** −.20*** −.15** −.04
Muslim * female −.16** −.17** −.14*
Jewish * female .07 .06 .07
Adolescent’s religiosity .07 −.07* −.02 −.18**
Partner: Status −.32*** −.33*** −.32*** −.37**
Partner: Social approval .20*** .18*** .18*** .18**
Partner: Stimulation .07* .07* .04 .05
Self-esteem .06 .09* .08*
Self-efficacy .01 .02 .03
Self-disclosure –.21*** –.18**
Parental control –.08* –.14**
Mother’s education –.14*** .08*
Mother’s religiosity –.08 –.20**
Adol. * Mother’s religiosity –.09**
R² .23 .23 .29
  Religious affiliation, reference: Christian
1)

country of residence were controlled. This independent effect of religiosity


made a more complex analysis necessary, which also included mechanisms
related to individual competencies and preferences.
Thus, the main theoretically interesting question was whether the sexual
involvement in romantic relationship of adolescents is primarily driven by
individual religiosity and related scripts of life, or driven by religious affil-
iation and the respective institutional structure of the social context and
its enforced social control. Table 13.2 introduces in three steps the part-
ner preferences of the adolescents: (1) some general personal traits, which
may be related to success in romantic partnerships, such as self-esteem
and self-efficacy, (2) several characteristics of the relationship of the ado-
lescent to his or her family, such as self-disclosure, perceived parental con-
trol, the educational level of the mother, her religiosity, and an interaction
term of her and the adolescent’s religiosity, indicating a strongly religious
family climate, and (3) in the fourth column, zero order correlations of
the respective variable with involvement in romantic relationships are
displayed.
The main result of the first model was that the significant effect
of individual religiosity from the models in Table 4 vanished if the
First Romantic Relationships 305

partnership preferences of the adolescent were added, whereas the


strong effect of religious affiliation remained stable and high, including
the strong interaction effect for Muslim females. This indicates that the
observed additive effect of religiosity on (reduced or delayed) sexual
involvement in romantic relationships was mainly a matter of distinct
expectations toward such a partnership, following the rationale that
stimulation, social approval, and communication feedback favored early
involvement, whereas status attainment favored deferred involvement.
Model two shows additionally that personal traits such as self-esteem
and self-efficacy had no direct effect on the involvement of adolescents
in romantic relationships.
The effects of social control on involvement in romantic relationships
of adolescents with different religious affiliation can be assessed in model
three. The main result of this model was that the strong effects of religious
affiliation and of partner preferences remained stable when the relationship
with the parents of the adolescents was controlled. However, this relation-
ship had a significant additional effect on the involvement. This is already
shown by the independent effect of a strong religious climate in the homes
of the adolescents on reduced or delayed involvement in romantic relation-
ships, independent of the respective religious affiliation and only becoming
significant if the interaction effect of the adolescent’s and the mother’s reli-
giosity was introduced.
Obviously, early sexual involvement of adolescents was strongly con-
nected with their self-disclosure to their parents and with lower perceived
parental control. The causal direction of this connection may be both ways:
on the one hand, adolescents with a less harmonious, sharing relation-
ship with their parents or with less controlling parents are more likely to
engage early in romantic relationships; on the other hand, the involvement
in a romantic relationship may result in keeping it secret to their parents
because of anticipated sanctions.
Complicated is the relationship between the mother’s educational level
and the involvement of their adolescent children in romantic relation-
ships. Whereas the zero order correlation was moderately positive, the
effect became significantly negative when all the other considered variables
were controlled. This indicates at first hand that the proportion of better
educated mothers was higher in the Christian and Jewish population than
in the Muslim population. If religious affiliation and religiosity as well as
partner preferences were controlled, the multivariate model then revealed
the suppressed effect of the mother’s education on the delay of romantic
relationships.
306 Nauck and Steinbach

Summary and Conclusion


The empirical findings of this comparative study on the relationship
between religious affiliation and involvement in romantic relationships of
young adolescents from different residential populations in Germany and
Israel may be summarized as follows.
First, the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim adolescents vary significantly
with regard to their levels of religiosity, with the Jewish adolescents hav-
ing the most heterogeneous composition with their low levels of religiosity
among the immigrant youth from Russia and high levels among the native
Israeli youth. Considerable differences also exist among the Muslim ado-
lescents, where the Israeli Arabs have a lower level of religiosity than the
Turkish migrants in Germany, but more religious mothers, which is accom-
panied by high parental control.
Second, the respective religious affiliation is related to marked differ-
ences in expectations toward romantic relationships. A clear divide is
between the Muslim adolescents on the one hand, being primarily status
oriented (especially the female Muslims) and expecting increased respect
from their social environment by having an appropriate partner. On the
other hand, Christian and Jewish adolescents primarily expect communica-
tion feedback and behavioral confirmation (especially the Christians) and
leisure sensation and physical attraction (especially the Jews). These utility
expectations toward romantic relationships steer involvement in roman-
tic relationship to a large extent, with status expectations being related to
delayed or lower levels of sexually intense romantic relationships, and with
stimulation and communication expectations being related to early and
higher levels of sexually intense romantic relationships.
Third, with regard to the level of involvement in romantic relation-
ships of adolescents, religious affiliation interacts with gender, but not with
religiosity. Whereas levels of religiosity seem to have the same impact on
delayed or decreased involvement in romantic relationships irrespective
of the religious affiliation, gender differences are observed for the Jewish
and especially the Muslim religion. Whereas the level of sexual involve-
ment is somewhat higher for the Jewish females than for Jewish males, the
involvement for the Muslim males is much higher than that of the Muslim
females. These effects of religious affiliation and religiosity seem to be to a
large extent independent of the larger social context within the respective
society of origin and the society of residence.
Fourth, parental control is related to the involvement in early roman-
tic relationships in several ways. On the one hand, the religious groups
First Romantic Relationships 307

differ significantly with regard to parental control, with relatively low levels
among the Christians and the highest levels among the Muslims. On the
other hand, early involvement in romantic relationships is a cause or con-
sequence of the adolescent’s disclosure from his/her family and/or lacking
parental control. Higher resources of parents, as indicated by the educa-
tional level, and a strong religious climate of the parental home reduces or
delays the involvement of adolescents in romantic relationships.
Fifth, only minor differences exist between adolescents of different reli-
gious affiliation and levels of religiosity with regard to their satisfaction
with their current partnership situation. That is, the adolescents seem to
follow their distinct strategies of partnership selection based on different
utility expectations, with similar confidence and satisfaction. Accordingly,
when these related factors are controlled, most adolescents are satisfied
with their relationship situation when the involvement has become more
intense and is accompanied by high self-esteem and a sharing-feelings
relationship with their parents. The most dissatisfied adolescents with
their current partnership situation are the Jewish males and the Muslim
females.
Although the comparative design of the study was able to shed light on
some of the mechanisms, which may explain religious-based differences
in early involvement of adolescents in intimate relationships, it has several
limitations with regard to its conclusiveness. One very specific shortcoming
is that the information on the involvement in romantic relationships did
not include event-based data. As this involvement in adolescence is very
much age related, this shortcoming did not allow for the separation of the
level differences and the timing differences; an event history-based data set
would also have allowed for the inclusion of time dependent covariates,
such as time of migration, school and occupational career, or marriage. For
theoretical reasons, such a separation would have been very important, as
it would have helped to separate migration effects of adaptation from cul-
tural effects of conformity with religious-based habits, frames, and scripts.
Instead, the analysis tried to keep the age factor constant in even controlling
for age variations within the age bracket of the sample, thus making as sure
as possible that the empirical findings are not owing to possible age varia-
tions between the studied groups.
In a more general sense, the design of the study, comprising groups of
three religions (Christians, Jews, Muslims), from four regions (Germany,
Russia, Turkey, Israel) in two national contexts (Germany, Israel), is not
balanced and thus not able to strictly separate the effects of migration and
religious affiliation. Moreover, more direct indicators of social control are
308 Nauck and Steinbach

missing, which did not allow for a more satisfactory separation of factors
related to individual spirituality from those related to the control struc-
ture of the respective religious institutions. Finally, the religious affiliation
was inevitably confounded with the societal welfare situation, placing the
Muslim population in a distinctively disadvantaged position in comparison
to the two other religious groups. It may well be – and cannot be tested,
unless these two explanatory mechanisms can be empirically clearly sep-
arated  – that the found differences among the Muslim groups are much
more related to efficient (and therefore, intergenerationally transmitted)
strategies of partner selection under conditions of very scarce resources
and thus may be found also among populations with a different religious
background, but similar living conditions.

Notes

1. This paper reports results from the project “Regulation of Developmental Transitions
in Second Generation Immigrants in Germany and Israel” (Principal Investigators:
Yoav Lavee, Bernhard Nauck, Avi Sagi-Schwartz, Rainer K. Silbereisen, Anja
Steinbach), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
(BMBF). We thank our collaborators from the Universities of Chemnitz, Jena, and
Haifa: Susanne Clauß, Falk Gruner, Mohini Lokhande, David Mehlhausen-Hassoen,
Andrea Michel, Katharina Stößel, and Peter Titzmann.

References

Baykara-Krumme, H., & Fuß, D. (2009). Heiratsmigration nach Deutschland:


Determinanten der transnationalen Partnerwahl türkeistämmiger Migranten
[Marriage migration to Germany: Determinants of transnational partner choice
of migrants with Turkish origin)]. Zeitschrift für Bevölkerungswissenschaft, 34,
135–163.
Bengtson, V. L., Copen, C., Putney, N., & Silverstein, M. (2009). A longitudinal study
of the intergenerational transmission of religion. International Sociology, 24,
325–345.
Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. Applied Psychology: An
International Review, 46, 5–34.
Bjorck, J. P., Braese, R. W., Tadie, J. T., & Gililland, D. D. (2010). The adolescent religious
coping scale: Development, validation, and cross-validation. Journal of Child and
Family Studies, 19, 343–359.
Diehl, C., & Koenig, M. (2009). Religiosität türkischer Migranten im Generationsverlauf.
Ein Befund und einige Erklärungsversuche [Intergenerational changes in religios-
ity of Turkish migrants. A finding and some explanational attempts]. Zeitschrift für
Soziologie, 38, 300–319.
Fowler, J. W., & Dell, M. L. (2006). Stages of faith from infancy through adolescence:
Reflections on three decades of faith development theory. In E. C. Roehlkepartain,
First Romantic Relationships 309

P. E. King, L. M. Wagener, & P. L. Benson (Eds.), The handbook of spiritual develop-


ment in childhood and adolescence (pp. 34–45). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
French, D. C., Eisenberg, N., Sallquist, J., & Purwono, U. (2012). The social context of
religion in Indonesian Muslim adolescents. In G. Trommsdorff & X. Chen (Eds.),
Values, religion, and culture in adolescent development (pp. 146–163). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
French, D. C., Eisenberg, N., Vaughan, J., Purwono, U., & Suryanti, T. A. (2008).
Religious involvement and the social competence and adjustment of Indonesian
Muslim adolescents. Developmental Psychology, 44, 597–611.
Gans, D., Silverstein, M., & Lowenstein, A. (2009). Do religious children care more and
provide more care for older parents? A study of filial norms and behaviors across
five nations. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 40, 187–201.
Güngör, D., Bornstein, M. H., & Phalet, K. (2011). Cultural patterns and acculturation
of religiosity: A study of Turkish, Turkish Belgian, and Belgian adolescents. Journal
for Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 1356–1374.
Güngör, D., Fleischmann, F., & Phalet, K. (in press). Religious identification, beliefs, and
practices among Turkish Belgian and Moroccan Belgian Muslims: Intergenerational
continuity and acculturative change. Child Development.
Jerusalem, M., & Schwarzer, R. (1992). Self-efficacy as a resource factor in stress
appraisal processes. In R. Schwarzer (Ed.), Self-efficacy: Thought control of action
(pp. 195–213). Washington, DC: Hemisphere.
Kerr, M., & Stattin, H. (2000). What parents know, how they know it, and several forms
of adolescent adjustment: further support for a reinterpretation of monitoring.
Developmental Psychology, 36, 366–380.
King, P. E., & Furrow, J. L. (2004). Religion as a resource for positive youth develop-
ment: Religion, social capital, and moral outcomes. Developmental Psychology, 40,
703–713.
Knafo, A., Assor, A., Schwartz, S., & David, L. (2009). Culture, migration, and fam-
ily-value socialization: A theoretical model and empirical investigation with
Russian immigrant youth in Israel. In U. Schönpflug (Ed.), Cultural transmission.
Developmental, psychological, social and methodological aspects (pp. 269–296).
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Knafo, A., & Schwartz, S. (2009). Accounting for parent–child value congruence:
Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence. In U. Schönpflug (Ed.), Cultural
transmission. Developmental, psychological, social and methodological aspects
(pp. 240–268). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Laflin, M. T., Wang, J., & Barry, M. (2008). A longitudinal study of adolescent transition
from virgin to nonvirgin status. Journal of Adolescent Health, 42, 228–236.
Lim, C., & Putnam, R. D. (2010). Religion, social networks, and life satisfaction.
American Sociological Review, 75, 914–933.
Lindenberg, S. (1990). Rationalität und Kultur. Die verhaltenstheoretische Basis des
Einflusses von Kultur auf Transaktionen [Rationality and culture. The behav-
ioral base of the influence of culture on transactions]. In H. Haferkamp (Ed.),
Sozialstruktur und Kultur (pp. 249–287). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Manlove, J., Logan, C., Moore, K. A., & Ikramullah, E. (2008). Pathways from family reli-
giosity to adolescent sexual activity and contraceptive use. Perspectives on Sexual
and Reproductive Health, 40, 105–117.
310 Nauck and Steinbach

Myers, S. M. (1999). Childhood migration and social integration in adulthood. Journal


of Marriage and the Family, 61, 774–789.
Nauck, B. (1989). Intergenerational relationships in families from Turkey and Germany.
An extension of the “value of children” approach to educational attitudes and
socialization practices. European Sociological Review, 5, 251–274.
  (1995). Educational climate and intergenerative transmission in Turkish families: A
comparison of migrants in Germany and non-migrants. In P. Noack, M. Hofer, &
J. Youniss (Eds.), Psychological responses to social change. Human development in
changing environment (pp. 67–85). Berlin: de Gruyter.
  (1997). Migration and intergenerational relations: Turkish families at home and
abroad. In W. W. Isajiw (Ed.), Multiculturalism in North America and Europe:
Comparative perspectives on interethnic relations and social incorporation (pp. 435–
465). Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press.
  (2001a). Intercultural contact and intergenerational transmission in immigrant fam-
ilies. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32, 159–173.
  (2001b). Der Wert von Kindern für ihre Eltern. “Value of Children” als spezielle
Handlungstheorie des generativen Verhaltens und von Generationenbeziehungen
im interkulturellen Vergleich [The value of children for their parents. “Value of
children” as a special action theory of generative behavior and intergenerational
relationships in cross-cultural comparison]. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und
Sozialpsychologie, 53, 407–435.
  (2007a). Immigrant families in Germany. Family change between situational adapta-
tion, acculturation, segregation and remigration. Zeitschrift für Familienforschung,
19, 34–54.
  (2007b). Value of children and the framing of fertility: Results from a cross-cultural
comparative survey in 10 societies. European Sociological Review, 23, 615–629.
  (2008). Acculturation. In F. J. R. van de Vijver, D. A. van Hemert, & Y. Poortinga
(Eds.), Multilevel analysis of individuals and cultures (pp. 379–409). New York:
Erlbaum.
Ormel, J., Lindenberg, S., Steverink, N., & Verbrugge, L. M. (1999). Subjective well-
being and social production functions. Social Indicators Research, 46, 61–90.
Oser, F. K., Scarlett, W. G., & Bucher, A. (2006). Religious and spiritual development
throughout the life span. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (6th
ed., Vol. 1: Theoretical models of human development, pp. 942–996). Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley & Sons.
Roehlkepartain, E. C., Benson, P. L., King, P. E., & Wagener, L. M. (2006). Spiritual
development in childhood and adolescence: Moving to the scientific mainstream.
In E. C. Roehlkepartain, P. E. King, L. M. Wagener, & P. L. Benson (Eds.), The hand-
book of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence (pp. 1–15). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rosenberg, M. J. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Rostosky, S. S., Wilcox, B. L., Wright, M. L., & Randall, B. A. (2004). The impact of reli-
giosity on adolescent sexual behavior: A review of evidence. Journal of Adolescent
Research, 19, 677–697.
South, S. J., Haynie, D. L., & Bose, S. (2005). Residential mobility and the onset of ado-
lescent sexual activity. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 499–514.
First Romantic Relationships 311

Trommsdorff, G. (2009). Intergenerational relations and cultural transmission. In


U. Schönpflug (Ed.), Cultural transmission. Developmental, psychological, social and
methodological aspects (pp. 126–160). New York: Cambridge University Press.
UNESCO (2006). International standard classification of education – ISCED 1997 (2nd
ed.): UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
Part Four
Socialization Processes of Values and
Religion in Adolescent Development
14 Attachment and Religious Development
in Adolescence
The Implications of Culture

Pehr Granqvist

Abstract
In this attachment-theoretical chapter, I highlight relations between attach-
ment and religious development in adolescence, while taking cultural
implications into account. I argue that adolescence is a sensitive phase of
development related to both attachment and religiosity. This period is often
associated with transfer of attachment functions from parents to age-mates.
In the religious realm, this period may be linked to either increased religios-
ity (e.g., conversion) or to disengagement from religion. During adolescence,
an attachment-like relationship with God may also develop. Furthermore, on
the basis of empirical studies, I discuss the implications of individual differ-
ences in attachment security for religious development in adolescence. I dis-
tinguish between two notable developmental pathways: secure attachment to
religious caregivers as a basis for religious stability (“correspondence path-
way”) and insecure attachment to caregivers as a basis of distress regulation
through religion (“compensation pathway”). In the first case, believers are
more likely to experience well-being; in the latter case, religion may serve as
a protective factor in development. I also take into account possible negative
effects of religion on adjustment. Finally, I discuss the cultural generalizabil-
ity versus specificity of each of the central arguments in the chapter.

In this chapter, I argue that attachment theory is a viable framework for


understanding certain aspects of religious development, values, and adjust-
ment in adolescence. Adolescence is a key period of development both for
attachment and religion. Regarding attachment, adolescence signifies an
important transitional period when attachment functions are transferred
from parents to others, typically love partners and close friends. Not coin-
cidentally, a century of research indicates that adolescence also represents

315
316 Granqvist

an age of religious awakening, during which an attachment-like relation-


ship with God may be especially likely to develop. However, adolescence is
also known as the age of apostasy, marked by disengagement from the faith
one was brought up in. Besides highlighting a connection between norma-
tive aspects of attachment and religious development, I review findings
of individual differences that suggest two attachment-related pathways
in relation to adolescent religious development. The first goes via secure
attachment to religious caregivers (“correspondence” pathway) and is typi-
cally associated with religious stability or reaffirmation in adolescence. The
second goes via distress regulation in the context of insecure attachment
(“compensation” pathway). Adolescence in general and attachment trans-
fer in particular are associated with emotional turbulence, not least for
adolescents with a history of insecure attachment, who may find in God an
appealing attachment surrogate. In that context, I highlight the possibility
that religion in general, and religion-as-compensation in particular, may
serve as a protective factor on youth adjustment and values, for example,
against the adverse effects that are otherwise typically associated with inse-
cure attachment.
The first three main sections of the chapter largely take a “Western per-
spective” in that they describe research and theorizing that have mostly been
undertaken in the Western world. Whereas there is a dearth of systematic
research on most of these matters in other parts of the world, an additional
main section on cultural considerations (vis-à-vis attachment theory and
research, the notion of attachment transfer, and the religion-as-attachment
idea) is offered before concluding the chapter.

Brief Overview of Attachment Theory and Research


John Bowlby (1969–1980), the originator of attachment theory, defined
attachment as a strong disposition on the part of offspring in many mamma-
lian species to seek proximity to and contact with a specific figure. During
the first year of life, human infants typically develop one or a few attachment
relationships, typically with their primary caregiver(s). Bowlby (1969–1980)
described attachment relationships as strong and enduring affectional bonds
characterized by the attached person (i.e., the offspring) selectively main-
taining proximity to the caregiver, using the caregiver as a safe haven during
distress, and as a secure base when exploring the environment. Finally, in
using the caregiver (or attachment figure) in these ways, this figure is implic-
itly perceived as stronger and wiser by the attached person.
Attachment and Religious Development 317

According to Bowlby (1969–1980), attachment behaviors (e.g., cry-


ing, locomotion) are governed by an attachment behavioral system, held
to have been naturally selected over the course of evolution because it
potentiated gene survival in our evolutionary environment(s) by pro-
tecting mammalian offspring from natural dangers via keeping them in
proximity to their attachment figures. The attachment system is held to
be universal and to be activated by natural clues to danger, which can
have both external (e.g., physical separation, predators approaching) and
internal (e.g., fear, illness) sources. The system is held to be deactivated by
natural clues to safety, most notably physical contact with the attachment
figure.
Bowlby (1969–1980) also argued that early interactions with the attach-
ment figure lay the foundation for what he termed “internal working mod-
els” (IWMs) of Self and Others in relationships. Such working models
are believed to serve as generalizing templates from early experience that
guide our perceptions, expectations, and behaviors in future close relation-
ships. Although these working models are held to be continually updated,
principles of cognitive assimilation and behavioral automatization make a
complete transformation of IWMs based on later experiences less likely.
Therefore, Bowlby (1969–1980) expected general continuity of IWMs
across maturation and relationships, while acknowledging that in the wake
of marked, lingering shifts in experience, lawful discontinuity was expected.
Such IWMs are described as partially unconscious, due at least in part to
the immaturity of the brain’s memory systems at early ages of development
(Bowlby, 1969–1980).
Finally, Bowlby (e.g., 1969–1980) argued that the attachment system
is active from cradle to grave, for example, in long-term adult pair-bonds.
However, physical proximity gradually becomes a less important component
of attachment. A psychological sense of “felt security” has therefore been sug-
gested as a more viable aspect of attachment in older individuals (Sroufe &
Waters, 1977). Felt security may be achieved by purely non-physical means,
such as thinking about or looking at a picture of the attachment figure.
Ainsworth and colleagues observed that a substantial minority of children
did not behave as expected based on Bowlby’s normative model (Ainsworth,
Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978), which set the stage for a focus on individual
differences in attachment patterns. At the core of secure attachment (B; ca
60–70 percent in normal samples; van IJzendoorn, Schuengel, & Bakermans-
Kranenburg, 1999) is the assumption of a positive and coherent set of IWMs.
This is manifested in a behavioral balance between attachment and exploration
318 Granqvist

in infants and in linguistic coherence in discussions of attachment-related


memories in adolescents and adults (Main, Goldwyn, & Hesse, 2003).
Throughout development, secure attachment is marked by a view of the self as
worthy of care and an expectation of others as able and likely to provide care.
Insecure attachment (ca 30–40 percent in normal samples; van IJzendoorn
et al., 1999) is often subdivided to three categories, avoidant (A), resistant
(C), and disorganized/ disoriented (D; Main & Solomon, 1990). Avoidant
children engage in (defensive) exploration at the expense of attachment. In
contrast, C children engage in attachment at the expense of exploration.
Finally, D children display various forms of behavioral breakdowns in the
presence of the attachment figure (e.g., opposing behaviors, such as mov-
ing away from parent while crying; Main & Solomon, 1990). Across differ-
ent types of insecurity, IWMs are supposedly negative and incoherent (see
Cassidy & Shaver, 2008).
Research has shown aspects of caregiving, especially during the indi-
vidual’s first year of life, to be the most consistent predictors of attachment
quality, while the direct role of genetic heritability has typically been found
negligible (for a review, see Cassidy & Shaver, 2008). More specifically, the
following aspects of caregiving have been associated with the different
qualities of attachment: sensitivity (i.e., responding promptly and appro-
priately) with B; rejection with A; markedly inconsistent responsiveness
with C; and abusive, frightening, or dissociative caregiving with D (ibid.).
Individual differences in attachment organization have been established
as important predictors of socioemotional development (ibid.). For exam-
ple, B has predicted prosocial behaviors and a low degree of behavioral
problems in childhood and adolescence. In contrast, D has foreshadowed
later behavioral problems (e.g., aggression), dissociative inclinations, and
psychopathology (van IJzendoorn et al., 1999).
Much of the early attachment research also suggested that secure children
are more successfully socialized than other children (e.g., Stayton, Hogan,
& Ainsworth, 1971; see also Richters & Waters, 1991). The conclusion from
these studies was that socialization does not require special techniques of
discipline but that it is a natural consequence of the child obtaining sensitive
caregiving, where the child’s signals and needs are given high priority.

Normative Aspects of Adolescent Development


The Transfer of Attachment
A key task for the adolescent is to develop a certain measure of autonomy vis-
à-vis parents. Initially, pubertal changes tend to initiate some distancing from
Attachment and Religious Development 319

parents (e.g., Steinberg & Morris, 2001), which is further strengthened by


the adolescent’s increasing capacity to think about relationships, including a
ripening ability to evaluate the internal consistency (or lack thereof) between
what parents say and do (often associated with deidealization of parents).
Thus, autonomy strivings tend to take place most often at the instigation of
the adolescent, who typically wants to take it faster and farther than his/her
parents are often willing to allow (e.g., Smetana, 2002). For example, the ado-
lescent may not only accept to be in charge of what clothes to wear, but may
now also expect to have a certain say on how much to study, what friends to
hang out with, what partners to date, what to do with the partners, what drugs
to take, and what hours to be home in bed.
Besides behavioral autonomy strivings, adolescents often question paren-
tal values or the values of the older generation (e.g., conservation values),
and instead express values of their own (e.g., openness values; e.g., Knafo
& Schwartz, 2001). Such a generational chasm in value endorsement (e.g.,
religious values) between youth and their parents is especially pronounced
among immigrant youth facing the dual task of balancing the values of their
parents’ home cultures with those of their current host countries (cf. the
notion of “acculturation gaps;” e.g., Birman & Poff, 2010). Thus, parents
only rarely go along for the full “autonomy” ride, presumably because of
lingering perceptions of immaturity in the offspring on part of the parents
(e.g., Allen, 2008). Hence, some turbulence tends to surround the adoles-
cent’s autonomy strivings.
Moreover, adolescents’ growing push for autonomy (Steinberg, 1990)
typically coincides with their increasing (and perhaps seemingly inap-
propriate) dependence on peers, typically romantic partners and friends
(Allen, 2008). This means that attachment functions can be met through
peers while adolescents establish some autonomy in relation to parents.
Zeifman and Hazan (e.g., 2008) have suggested that attachment forma-
tion with peers may unfold in steps analogous to attachment formation with
caregivers in infancy. In other words, the transfer of attachment may begin
with the transfer of the proximity-seeking component, via the safe haven
function, and end with the transfer of the secure base component in a step-
by-step process. This process is typically initiated already in middle child-
hood (transfer of the proximity component), intensified in adolescence (the
safe haven function), and concluded in early adulthood (the secure base
component). Empirical research in the United States, Germany, Sweden,
and mainland China has tended to support this stepwise model (e.g., Fraley
& Davis, 1997; Friedlmeier & Granqvist, 2006; Zeifman & Hazan, 2008;
Zhang, Chan, & Teng, 2011).
320 Granqvist

Long-term romantic partners are most often ultimately selected out


as the principal attachment figures of adulthood (Bowlby, 1969–1980;
Zeifman & Hazan, 2008). From an evolutionary perspective, it is not dif-
ficult to imagine that this developmental transformation from a principal
attachment to protective parents in childhood to a principal attachment
to reproductive partners following pubertal maturation has been selected
(i.e., adaptive). Besides surviving until adolescence, the offspring may now
also pass their parents’ genes on to the next generation. Moreover, in a spe-
cies such as Homo sapiens, where offspring are immature and dependent
on high parental investment for a long period of their lives, genetic repro-
duction does not suffice, but the parents have also had to stick together for
mutual investment in the next generation. Attachment may serve here as
an emotional “glue” that binds prospective parents together. Thus, evolu-
tion may have co-opted the attachment system and put it to use also in the
context of adult pair-bonds (e.g., Zeifman & Hazan, 2008).

The Age of Religious Awakening and Apostasy: God


as a Symbolic Attachment Figure
This period of attachment transition coincides with one of the major
periods of religious and spiritual transformations in many peoples’ lives.
Adolescence and young adulthood have been noted as major religious tran-
sitional periods since the infancy days of the psychology of religion (e.g.,
Hall, 1904; James, 1902; Starbuck, 1899). Almost a century later, Argyle and
Beit-Hallahmi (1975, p. 59) still referred to adolescence as “the age of reli-
gious awakening.” One important reason for this is that adolescence and
early adulthood are the life periods most intimately associated with sudden
religious conversions and other significant changes in one’s relationship
with God. Moreover, it is well known that cult recruiters make teenagers
and young adults primary targets of their proselytizing and recruitment
activities. However, besides being linked to increased religiousness, as in
the experience of religious conversion, adolescence and early adulthood are
associated with apostasy, that is, the disengagement from religion among
those raised in a religious home (e.g., Roof & McKinney, 1987; Tamminen,
1994).
The reason that adolescence and early adulthood are religious transi-
tional periods has, however, remained unclear. Naturally, researchers of
very different theoretical persuasions have struggled with this question
based on, for example, Piaget’s theory of the development of formal oper-
ational thinking, ideas about increased libidinal energy within classical
psychoanalysis, the search for an identity (including a religious identity)
Attachment and Religious Development 321

within psychosocial theory, and a focus on re-socialization processes within


socialization theories (for a review, see Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009).Without
denying that these other processes may be involved as well, I suggest that
one important reason may be because attachment transfer is co-occurring
(see also Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2008). According to Weiss (1982, p. 178),
relinquishing one’s parents as attachment figures has a number of predict-
able consequences, including vulnerability to emotional loneliness, which
he defines as “the absence from one’s internal world of an attachment fig-
ure.” At such a time, adolescents may turn to God (or perhaps a charismatic
religious leader) as a substitute attachment-like figure. That is to say, attach-
ment components may not only be transferred to peers, but also, in some
cases, to God, and in other cases away from God. In line with this reason-
ing, Kupky (1928, p. 70) made a poignant observation more than 80 years
ago, in saying that “True love and religious experience are nearly impossible
before adolescence.”
This naturally leads to the question why the believer-God relationship
should be conceptualized as an attachment relationship in the first place.
Here, I will give a few examples of past findings from the psychology of
religion that illustrate how the believer-God relationship comes to func-
tion as an attachment-like relationship (or a symbolic attachment; for more
comprehensive reviews, see Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2008; Kirkpatrick,
2005).
First, regarding proximity/closeness maintenance, prayer may func-
tion as a religious analogue of attachment behaviors (Kirkpatrick, 2005).
Although there are many kinds of prayers, one of the most frequently
endorsed reasons for praying is to experience a sense of closeness to God
(Hood et al., 2009). The importance of proximity or closeness to God is also
highlighted by what it means to be separated from God; in much Christian
theology, this is the very essence of Hell, the worst case scenario.
Second, concerning God as a safe haven, people are particularly likely
to turn to God during stress, and the more stressful a situation is, the more
likely people are to do so (e.g., Pargament, 1997). Research also suggests
that an overwhelming majority of sudden religious conversions occur dur-
ing emotional turmoil (e.g., Ullman, 1982).
Third, with respect to the secure base component, believers maintain
that God is loving, supportive, guiding, and protective (Kirkpatrick, 2005),
qualities that are important for any secure base to possess in order to pro-
mote well-being and exploration in the attached person. Also, experienc-
ing a personal relationship with such a God predicts aspects of well-being
(e.g., freedom from worry and remission from depression) over and above
322 Granqvist

conceivable covariates (Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2008; Smith, McCullough,


& Poll., 2003).
Finally, that believers perceive God as stronger and wiser really goes
without saying. In fact, at least within Christianity, God is typically even
perceived as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, representing qual-
ities that are difficult for any other attachment figure to outdo, as sensitive
as he or she might be.
To summarize, many aspects of religious beliefs and experiences, partic-
ularly those related to perceived relationships with God, reflect the opera-
tion of attachment processes. Although God and other divine figures are
typically unseen as interaction partners, religions thus likely capitalize on
the operation of the attachment system. Hence, believers’ perceived rela-
tionships with God can profitably be characterized as symbolic attachment
relationships.

Individual Differences in Adolescent Development


Attachment Security and its Socioemotional Correlates
There are important individual differences to consider in relation to the
turbulence surrounding adolescent development in general and attach-
ment transfer in particular. Security of attachment, unlike insecurity,
is associated with generally favorable developmental outcomes, such as
constructiveness of conflict resolution with parents, social competence
with peers, and a relative absence of externalizing (e.g., aggression and
risk behaviors, such as heavy drug and alcohol consumption, sexual pro-
miscuity) and internalizing (e.g., anxiety, depression) behavior problems
(Allen, 2008; Kobak, Cole, Ferenz-Gillies, & Fleming, 1993; Kobak &
Ferenz-Gillies, 1995; Kobak, Ferenz-Gillies, Everhart & Seabrook, 1994).
Hence, security of attachment fosters continuity of adaptation through-
out adolescence (e.g., Armsden & Greenberg, 1987; Lapsley, Rice, &
Fitzgerald, 1990; Rice, 1990).
In addition to its association with adjustment problems, insecurity of
attachment is linked to making a premature transfer of attachment in ado-
lescence (Friedlmeier & Granqvist, 2006). Moreover, adolescents with an
insecure attachment history are less likely to build close, trusting, and sat-
isfactory peer relations (Allen, 2008). Thus, insecurely attached adolescents
may be left in a state wherein felt security cannot be derived either by turn-
ing to parents or to peers for support. In sum, attachment turbulence is
likely to be especially pronounced for adolescents with insecure attachment
characteristics.
Attachment and Religious Development 323

Based on these developmental profiles, it is common to think about secure


attachment as a protective factor for adolescents’ adjustment, whereas inse-
cure (particularly disorganized) attachment is held as a vulnerability factor
in development (see Cassidy & Shaver, 2008). When combined with other
vulnerability and risk factors, insecure attachment may pave the way for
serious adjustment problems.

Two Developmental Pathways to Religion


What implications do these individual differences in attachment security
have for religious development in adolescence? Two general hypotheses
have been derived from attachment theory about how individual differ-
ences in attachment security relate to religion.

The Correspondence Pathway.  First, with the correspondence hypothesis,


we (e.g., Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2008) have suggested that religion in the
case of secure attachment develops from (1) generalized, positive represen-
tations of self and other (IWM aspect), and (2) partial adoption of a sensi-
tive caregiver’s religion (social aspect). Hence, insofar as the caregivers have
been actively religious, the secure offspring is expected to become likewise,
and in which case his or her beliefs in and perceptions of the divine will
mirror that of a sensitive attachment figure.
This hypothesis has received considerable empirical support in studies
across the lifespan (for a review, see Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2008), includ-
ing two prospective longitudinal studies of adolescents. The first of these
adolescent studies contained Swedish 15 to 17-year-olds drawn from both
secular schools and religious youth groups. As in adult studies, estimates of
parental sensitivity in childhood and a current secure peer attachment ori-
entation were linked to a comparatively high degree of parent–adolescent
similarity in religiousness (Granqvist, 2002). In other words, these adoles-
cents tended to affirm (and possibly reaffirm) the faith or lack of faith of
their parents. Moreover, in the same study, security was associated with
religious stability (Granqvist, 2002); the religiosity of these adolescents did
not characteristically wax and wane over time.
However, religiosity is under dynamic development throughout life,
and especially in adolescence, implying that absolute religious stabil-
ity should not be expected even for securely attached adolescents. Thus,
when these adolescents experienced a prospective increase in religiousness,
this increase tended to be gradual and to occur in the context of a posi-
tive influence from others (Granqvist, 2002). To give a more specific exam-
ple, in follow-up analyses we found that secure attachment prospectively
324 Granqvist

predicted increased religiousness over the 15-month time span studied, but
only when the participants had experienced the formation of a romantic
relationship between assessments (Granqvist & Hagekull, 2003).
Some of these results were conceptually replicated in the second study,
which was conducted in the United States on mid-adolescents who had
signed up for a Young Life evangelical summer camp. Secure attachment
with parents prospectively predicted a reaffirmation of the faith one had
been brought up with (i.e., a recommitment to God during the camp;
Schnitker, Porter, Emmons, & Barrett, 2012).
In addition, several studies that were not explicitly informed by attach-
ment theory have shown that parental religiousness is the best predictor
of offspring religiousness and that this extends to adolescence, especially
when the parent–adolescent relationship is marked by warmth and close-
ness (for a review, see Hood et al., 2009). Thus, there is substantial support
for the social aspect of the correspondence hypothesis.
In contrast, researchers have been less devoted to studying the content
aspects (as opposed to the presumed roots) of adolescent religiousness.
Therefore, at this point, no conclusion can be drawn with regard to the
IWM aspect of the correspondence hypothesis for adolescents. It is nota-
ble, however, that both child and adult studies have found, in line with
the idea of generalizing IWMs, that securely attached individuals tend
to view God as a reliable safe haven and secure base, as evident in loving
God imagery and implicit usage of God as a “functional” attachment fig-
ure (for a review, see Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2008). In principle, there
is no reason to assume that adolescent studies would yield a different
conclusion.

The Compensation Pathway.  Bowlby (1969–1980) speculated that cer-


tain conditions may lead people to seek out surrogate attachment figures.
Insecure attachment in the principal attachment relationships may be one
of these conditions. Accordingly, with the second hypothesis, labeled the
compensation hypothesis, we (e.g., Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2008) have
suggested that religiosity in the case of insecure attachment develops from
attachment-related distress regulation strategies, where God functions as
a surrogate attachment figure. This hypothesis has also received empirical
support in several studies across the lifespan, including the two adoles-
cent studies previously described. In the Swedish study, we found posi-
tive relations between insecure peer attachment and estimates of parental
insensitivity on the one hand and scores on an “emotionally based” reli-
giousness scale on the other, referring to the extent to which God is used
Attachment and Religious Development 325

to regulate attachment-related distress (Granqvist, 2002; Granqvist &


Hagekull, 1999).
In particular, insecurity and parental insensitivity were linked to reli-
gious instability; religiosity did characteristically wax and wane over time
for these adolescents. Also, their religiousness tended to increase specifically
during stress. This conclusion was later corroborated in a meta-analysis of
sudden religious conversions, which included nearly 1,500 participants,
some of whom were adolescents. In the meta-analysis, insecurity as com-
pared to security with parents was overrepresented among the sudden con-
verts (9 percent vs. 5 percent, respectively) but not among gradual converts
or non-converts (Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2004). In follow-up analyses
of the adolescent sample, we found that the religiosity of insecure adoles-
cents prospectively increased, but only when the participants had experi-
enced a romantic relationship break up between assessments (Granqvist &
Hagekull, 2003). Notably, religion also decreased for some of the insecure
adolescents, which tended to happen following the formation of other close
relationships (ibid.).
Some of these findings were also conceptually replicated in the U.S. Young
Life summer camp study (Schnitker et al., 2012). For example, late adoles-
cent summer camp staff members whose relationship narratives suggested
insecure parental attachment were significantly more likely (38 percent) to
have experienced a sudden religious conversion when they attended camp
themselves, compared to those whose relationship narratives suggested
secure parental attachment (10 percent).
As the findings from the meta-analysis of sudden conversions indicate,
sudden religious conversion experiences are typically rare even among
insecure adolescents. Indeed, since the infancy days of the psychology of
religion at the turn of the 19th century, parts of the world – and especially
the European “Welfare states” (of which Sweden is a prime example) – have
seen traditional, institutionalized religion take on an increasingly marginal-
ized role in society (e.g., Gill & Lundsgaarde, 2004). At the same time, more
privatized and self-centering forms of spirituality have increased, especially
among younger segments of the population (e.g., Houtman & Aupers,
2007). This change in the religious and spiritual landscape prompted us to
ask whether some of the insecure adolescents who might have sought out
religion as compensation a century or so ago would be especially inclined
to adopt these “New Age” forms of spirituality. Our findings confirmed an
association between maternal insensitivity and a particular form of inse-
cure peer attachment orientation known as fearful avoidant attachment (cf.
disorganized attachment; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007) on the one hand and
326 Granqvist

New Age spirituality on the other (Granqvist & Hagekull, 2001). As New
Age spirituality typically does not contain the postulate of a metaphysical
attachment-like figure, these findings were initially somewhat puzzling on
theoretical grounds. However, follow-up analyses on adults clarified that
a relation between disorganized attachment and New Age spirituality was
indirect, mediated by a general propensity to experience dissociative alter-
ations in consciousness (Granqvist, Fransson, & Hagekull, 2009).

Religion as a Protective Factor in Adolescent Development


Although the compensation hypothesis may seem to represent a “defi-
ciency” approach to religion, it is likely that religion in general and religion
as compensation in particular fills a protective factor in development, for
example, against the adverse effects on adolescent adjustment that are oth-
erwise often associated with insecure attachment. There are three strands
of empirical evidence, some of which is inferential, suggesting that this may
indeed be the case.
First, religion is connected to adjustment-promoting values and behav-
iors (e.g., Hood et al., 2009; Resnick et al., 1997), such as prosociality. For
example, adolescents who say that religion is important in their lives are
more likely to do volunteer work in the community than adolescents who
say that religion is not important (e.g., Youniss, McLellan, & Yates, 1999).
By the same token, religions often preach the abstinence from maladaptive
distress regulation behaviors, such as drug consumption and binge drink-
ing. Consequently, perhaps, religiousness is related to decreased external-
izing behavior problems, such as delinquent behaviors, lower rates of drug
and alcohol use, less sexual activity, and delayed onset of sexual activity (for
a review, see Hood et al., 2009). In addition, according to the same review,
religiousness is related to decreased internalizing behavior problems, such
as anxiety and depression. Moreover, religiousness is associated with posi-
tive indicators of adjustment, such as well-being, particularly among ado-
lescents in at-risk populations (e.g., Moore & Glei, 1995). It is notable in
this literature that although the causality question remains far from settled,
most researchers tackle it in terms of the adjustment promoting effects of
religious socialization processes (Hood et al., 2009).
Second, whether occurring in adolescence or adulthood, conversions
and other profound religious experiences tend to be associated with sub-
stantial attenuations in the distress that typically preceded those experi-
ences (e.g., Ullman, 1982; Zinnbauer & Pargament, 1998; see also reviews
by Hood et al., 2009; Pargament, 1997). In other words, “personal problems
may set the stage for conversion, and it can be a constructive solution to
Attachment and Religious Development 327

those difficulties” (Hood et al., 2009, p. 447). However, research about the
long-term “effects” of such experiences has yielded mixed conclusions. Some
studies suggest that sudden converts, while initially experiencing dramatic
levels of decline in suffering and an increase in states of joy and bliss, may
eventually relapse into experiences of sin, guilt, and suffering (e.g., Kildahl,
1965; Spellman, Baskett, & Byrne, 1971). By comparison, the “therapeutic
effect” of gradual conversions seems more reliable (ibid.). In either case,
however, Hill (2002) notes how such spiritually transformative experiences
may create changes in meaning systems that yield a positive affective state
through a new (or renewed) sense of purpose, value, and self-worth.
Finally, attachment to God and other aspects of religion may also, in
some cases, ultimately promote some degree of “earned attachment security”
(Main et al., 2003) in the secular domain. This speculation has been spurred
by two sets of findings in the adult literature on attachment and religion.
First, self-reported insecure attachment history and romantic attachment
(in the latter case, particularly a negative self-model or a high degree of
attachment anxiety) have been linked to increasing religiousness and spiri-
tuality over time, and yet secure attachment has been linked to higher reli-
giousness and spirituality at a given point in time (see Kirkpatrick, 2005).
One interpretation of this pattern is that increasing religiousness some-
how helps the individual to gain attachment security. Second, independent
Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; Main et al. 2003) coders’ estimates of
parental insensitivity in study participants’ pasts have predicted a history
of using religion as compensation for inadequate attachments, but current
AAI-assessed insecurity (incoherent attachment discourse) has been unre-
lated to religion as compensation (Cassibba et al., 2008; Granqvist, Ivarsson,
Broberg, & Hagekull, 2007). Thus, similarly, religion as compensation may
lead to an increase in attachment security.
Hence, it is possible that a process of positive change in IWMs of rela-
tively insecure individuals might be initiated by experiencing God’s love
and forgiveness, which would be comparable to the idea of reparative
effects from other relationship experiences, such as with a good therapist or
a secure romantic partner (e.g., Bowlby, 1988; Main et al., 2003). Although
speculative at this point, this interpretation would make theoretical sense
if the individual’s perceived relationship with God actually functions as a
compensatory attachment relationship. It would also be theologically plau-
sible, given the portrayal of God as a sensitive secure base and haven of
safety that has been described in this chapter.
In particular, repair of a negative self-model might be one avenue through
which earned security via religion/spirituality plays itself out. After all, God
328 Granqvist

supposedly loves everyone, despite their “unworthiness.” Notably, such an


earned security effect may require religious practice for many years and
would probably not play itself out until adulthood.
In summary, religions generally encourage behaviors that counteract a
developmental path to maladjustment and promote a path to adjustment.
Religious experiences also serve to attenuate distress and shift the mind’s
focus to a new (or renewed) meaning system, including prosocial values.
Finally, by offering a compensatory attachment-like figure, religion may
ultimately promote some degree of earned attachment security, which in
turn would aid in offsetting the deleterious effects that are otherwise often
associated with adverse experiences in past attachment relationships.
Of course, elaborating on these promises is in no way to deny that reli-
gions may also have what most would view as negative effects on adjust-
ment. At the individual or micro level, for example, the blooming sexual
urges of adolescents, often expressed in masturbation, consumption of por-
nography, and trembling sexual encounters, may be experienced as sinful
and hence become a source of guilt. As another example, at the societal or
macro level, disagreements over religious contents may become the source
of intergroup conflicts, with potentially explosive consequences for the sur-
rounding. In particular, I speculate that religion, in any of its authoritar-
ian forms, may have its most deleterious effects when harshly imposed by
insensitive caregivers on offspring who find themselves in a homogenous
cultural (or subcultural) situation that gives them limited opportunity to
distance themselves from the preaching of such a religion.

Cultural Considerations
In the previous review, I have almost exclusively focused on research per-
taining to attachment, adolescent development, religion, and values of the
contemporary Western world. Therefore, it is an open question whether the
conclusions drawn are generalizable to other parts of the world, let alone
earlier historical periods in the West. Some may be, whereas others may
not. In this section, I will discuss cross-cultural considerations pertaining
to the central proposals of this chapter.

Attachment Theory and Research


Cross-cultural considerations regarding attachment theory and research do
not inevitably lead to any marked changes in the conclusions of this chap-
ter, although the cross-cultural validity of attachment theory and research
have been challenged (e.g., Rothbaum, Weisz, Pott, Miyake, & Morelli,
Attachment and Religious Development 329

2000). Rothbaum and colleagues (2000) argued, for example, that attach-
ment theory is culturally biased in emphasizing exploration and autonomy
as hallmarks of security, and that Western-based assessments of security
such as the strange situation (Ainsworth et al., 1978) give misleading
results when utilized in cultures with other values and practices surround-
ing relationships (i.e., customs of caregiving). In my view, critical cross-
cultural considerations are a most welcome contribution to the attachment
­literature – issues pertaining to universality versus cultural embeddedness
are important for theoretical as well as practical reasons. For illustrational
purposes, Rothbaum and colleagues (2000) focused their critique exclu-
sively on differences between Japan and the United States. They reviewed
evidence showing that Japanese mothers value and foster more dependency
(or amae – but see Behrens, 2004, for an alternate, multifaceted view of this
construct) in their children, whereas U.S. mothers value and foster more
independence. The implication of this review is, in part, that what would be
regarded as signs of insecurity in the United States (dependency) is under-
stood very differently in Japan.
However, Rothbaum and colleagues’ (2000) conclusions are not without
problems. First, the values of attachment theory should not necessarily be
viewed as an expression of United States’ values, or values of the Western
world for that matter. For example, attachment is not about individualism
or independence, but about relatedness and willingness to allow oneself to
depend on others. Indeed, one of Bowlby’s (e.g., 1969–1980) major points
as far as values are concerned is that healthy development in all phases of
life is characterized by one’s willingness to develop close relationships with
others, and the ability to use them as safe havens and secure bases. To put
matters simply, and as noted previously in this chapter, attachment security
is characterized by a balance between attachment and exploration. Second,
and relatedly, although cultures may differ somewhat in their emphases on
attachment versus exploration, perhaps with the United States and Japan
as two good examples of differential emphases, Rothbaum and colleagues
(2000) most likely exaggerated the implications of such differences. In fact,
the hallmarks of security (i.e., a balance between the two) are positively
valued in both countries (e.g., Posada et al., 1995). Hence, just as the will-
ingness to use the caregiver as a safe haven in distress is a desideratum in
U.S. infants, the ability to use the caregiver as a secure base for exploration
is a desideratum in Japanese infants.
The only unequivocal universality assumption within attachment the-
ory of which I am aware is the proposal that mammalian offspring pos-
sess an attachment-behavioral system and develop selective attachments to
330 Granqvist

their caregivers (Bowlby, 1969–1980). This assumption is uncontroversial


and has a strong standing in psychology, anthropology, and ethology alike.
Tellingly, Bowlby’s original ideas on these matters were developed largely
based on observations of other mammals. Also, it is worth noting that the
first systematic observations of human infants based on attachment the-
ory were conducted not in the West but in Uganda, Africa (Ainsworth,
1967). These observations ultimately paved the way for the development
of the strange situation procedure (Ainsworth et al., 1978) in the West.
As it turned out, U.S. infants displayed fewer attachment behaviors than
Ugandan infants. Studying U.S. infants’ attachment behaviors was therefore
accomplished by placing them in a novel environment and separating them
from their caregivers (i.e., stronger measures were required to activate their
attachment systems).
In addition to the universality assumption, cross-cultural research has
been evaluated in relation to assumptions regarding individual differences
in attachment, such as the normativity assumption (i.e., secure attachment
is the predominant pattern of attachment across cultures), the sensitivity
assumption (i.e., caregiver sensitivity is related to child attachment secu-
rity), and the competence assumption (i.e., secure attachment is related to
various competencies in socioemotional aspects of development) (see van
IJzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008). Regarding the normativity assump-
tion, it is founded on the implicit premise that most caregivers and care-
giving arrangements across cultures are “good enough” to foster secure
attachment. Thus, the normativity assumption is predicated on the sensitiv-
ity assumption. In principle, however, there could be cultures where malev-
olent caregiving practices are normative, marked by, for example, harsh
physical discipline and consistent rejection of the children’s attachment
behaviors. If so, secure attachment would not be expected as the modal
outcome. Luckily, however, in the studies reviewed by van IJzendoorn and
Sagi-Schwartz (2008), across a wide array of cultures from the West, Asia
(including Japan and China), Israel, and Africa (including the Dogon of
Mali, the Gusii of Kenya, and impoverished Khayelishta of South Africa),
secure attachment was the norm. Thus, to date, the cross-cultural database
has supported the normativity assumption.
However, the prevalence of different kinds of insecure attachment has
been found to differ somewhat across cultures and, perhaps more nota-
bly, across samples within the same cultures. Japanese studies are again a
good case in point. One Japanese study (Takahashi, 1986; see also Miyake,
Chen, & Campos, 1985) showed an unexpectedly high proportion (32 per-
cent) of insecure/resistant (C) attachment and an absence of avoidant (A)
Attachment and Religious Development 331

attachment. Drawing in part on that study, Rothbaum and colleagues (2000)


suggested that C attachment does not contain the same insecurity connota-
tion within Japan as in the West, presumably because of amae/dependency
being a desideratum in Japan. However, at least two other Japanese studies
have shown a distribution of attachment that is more comparable to the
Western world (Behrens, Hesse, & Main, 2007; Durrett, Otaki, & Richards,
1984; see van IJzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008, for additional Q-sort
based studies). Considering cultural variations in caregiving and the diffi-
culty of administering a complex procedure such as the strange situation in
a culturally sensitive way, such mixed findings are not unexpected. In line
with the positive valence of amae in Japan, for example, Japanese infants are
carried more and separated less than infants in the West (Behrens, 2004).
Consequently, Japanese infants probably find the usual three-minute sepa-
rations of the strange situation more stressful and may find it more diffi-
cult to settle following reunion with the caregiver. As the strange situation
should be no more than mildly to moderately stressful (Ainsworth et al.,
1978), a (culturally) sensitive administration necessitates briefer separa-
tions for infants (whether Japanese or not) who show strong and persis-
tent separation protest. It is notable, in this regard, that Takahashi (1986)
allowed up to a full two minutes of continuous crying during separations
before the reunions took place, whereas other studies tend to allow only
20–30 seconds (van IJzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008).
Takahashi (1986) herself acknowledged this possible role of excessive
stress in producing “false Cs.” Looking more carefully at the distribution,
she found that roughly half of the C infants (or 15 percent of the full sam-
ple) were made C (“inconsistent C”) only after potentially excessive stress
exposure in the second separation episode, leaving only 17 percent of “con-
sistent C” in the sample. When part of this sample was later re-analyzed
by Grossmann and Grossmann (1989), several of the overstressed infants
(whether originally assigned C or B classifications) were found to display
odd and opposing behaviors, suggesting that the excessive stress may also
have produced behavioral breakdowns that would have warranted (false)
D classifications if the D system (Main & Solmon, 1990) had been in use at
the time.
It is notable that although most of the cross-cultural discussions of attach-
ment distributions have focused on Japan, C attachment has been found
more consistently overrepresented in Israel, possibly owing to hypervigi-
lance and “overprotection” on the part of Israeli mothers who face the con-
stant threat of terror (van IJzendoorn & Sagi-Schartz, 2008). Unless parts of
the Western world had dominated this area of studies, we would probably
332 Granqvist

have asked why A attachment is overrepresented (compared with C) in


many Western nations (see in particular Grossmann, Grossmann, Spangler,
Suess, & Unzner, 1985). Rather than viewing such findings as a challenge
to the cross-cultural validity of attachment theory, however, we may view
them as indicating a need for research on the contextual variations (e.g.,
caregiving arrangements) that conceivably produce those differences. Such
findings should also provoke a potentially fruitful methodological discus-
sion vis-à-vis cultural considerations.
In their review, van IJzendoorn and Sagi-Schwartz (2008) conclude that,
as compared with the normativity assumption, the sensitivity and compe-
tence assumptions have received less extensive support in the cross-cul-
tural attachment database. The most important reasons for this may be that
relevant aspects pertaining to these assumptions have been insufficiently
researched outside of the West and that the studies that have been con-
ducted have employed insufficient sample sizes. For example, the meta-ana-
lytic link between maternal sensitivity and attachment security uncovered
on largely Western samples is but r = .24 (DeWolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997).
Many studies conducted outside of the West have not used large enough
samples to uncover effects of such a modest to moderate magnitude.

Adolescent Development and Attachment Transfer


Likewise, cross-cultural considerations regarding adolescent development
and attachment transfer do not inevitably lead to any marked changes in the
conclusions of this chapter. Initially, the idea of a strong push for autonomy
from parents in order to develop a family constellation separate from that of
the original family might seem like a case in point of a 20th century ethno-
centric psychology of the West. After all, in many non-Western cultures –
as well as in past historical periods of the West – people live(d) in extended
family networks that include(d) members of at least one spouse’s original
family. Thus, continued codependence on the original family would seem
like a more pronounced theme in such cultures and historical periods than
the “autonomy” (or even “separation”) theme that is currently characteristic
of the Western world. As a simple illustration of the differing roles of fam-
ily and peers among cultures, Western youth spend much more time with
peers and leisure activities outside of the family context than do adolescents
from nonindustrial and Asian populations (Larson & Verma, 1999). On
the basis of such findings, Larson and Verma hypothesized that, “the sub-
stantial amount of time that youth in nonindustrial and Asian populations
spend with their families is related to experience of greater family support
and to greater socialization into family and cultural norms ” (p. 724). One
Attachment and Religious Development 333

implication of such findings is that Western youth may make a compar-


atively early (perhaps premature) transfer of attachment from parents to
peers (cf. Zhang et al., 2011).
Nevertheless, even in non-Western cultures, child–parent conflict tends
to increase following puberty (e.g., Steinberg & Morris, 2001). Indeed, in
some non-industrialized parts of the world, as among non-human pri-
mates, adolescence (i.e., post puberty) is associated with leaving the family
group to seek a new family, although non-married daughters are a nota-
ble exception to this conclusion (e.g., Schlegel & Barry, 1991). In general,
Western youths may be unusual in their delay of moving out (ibid.), which
may also be why they are so inclined to psychologically distance themselves
from their parents and instead spend time with their peers. Also, even if
the timeline for attachment transfer differs somewhat across cultures, most
individuals within most cultures do conceivably ultimately transfer their
principal attachments from parents to peers (cf. Zhang et al., 2011).

Religion as Attachment
Naturally, the cross-cultural variations in attachment, as previously
reviewed, does not provide a particularly solid basis for speculating about
their effects on religion. One reason for this is that the normativity assump-
tion has been supported across cultures. We are left with mostly minor and
occasionally inconsistent variations in proportions of A versus C attach-
ment across cultures. However, in principle, one might expect that cultures
with a large proportion of C attachment would foster clingy, all-consuming,
and strongly emotional forms of religiosity, where deities would be viewed
as inconsistently responsive. In contrast, cultures with a large proportion
of A attachment might foster authoritarian forms of religiosity, marked by
fundamentalism and hostility to members of out-groups, and where dei-
ties would be perceived as distant and inaccessible. Finally, cultures with a
large proportion of D attachment might foster religions, or perhaps expres-
sions of spirituality, that sanctify various dissociation-related altered states
of consciousness, such as trance, mystical experiences, and spirit possession
(cf. Granqvist, Hagekull, & Ivarsson, 2012). It is conceivable that the dei-
ties (or spirits) of such cultures would be viewed as punitive, aberrant, and
frightening. Whereas these speculations stray quite a bit from what is avail-
able in the empirical literature, extant cross-cultural research has shown, in
line with the idea of generalizing working models, that deities are construed
as more loving in cultures where parenting is warm and accepting and as
more distant in cultures marked by harsh, rejecting parenting (Lambert,
Triandis, & Wolf, 1959; Rohner, 1986).
334 Granqvist

However, it is largely an open question whether attachment theory really


is applicable to religion outside of the Judeo-Christian faith traditions. Very
few explicit attachment and religion studies have been conducted outside
of the Western world and, to the best of my knowledge, none outside of
the major monotheistic traditions (other than the “New Age”-related beliefs
and activities discussed previously). Of course, the theistic idea of a per-
sonal God who is involved in peoples’ everyday affairs fits especially well
to an attachment theory conceptualization. However, even in countries
dominated by Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, which
Westerners tend to think of as abstract, godless philosophies, believers often
focus on the more theistic components of the belief system and on personal
gods imported from ancient folk religions (see Kirkpatrick, 2005, for a dis-
cussion). For example, although Buddhism is supposedly non-theistic as
far as metaphysical beliefs are concerned, it is very common for everyday
Buddhists to pray and sacrifice to Buddha (or perhaps a boddhisattva), sug-
gesting that Buddha may function as a symbolic attachment figure after
all (see also Granqvist, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2010). However, unless one
is willing to semantically dilute the attachment construct, the same can
probably not be said for philosophies such as Confucianism, Communism,
and Daoism that are dominating peoples’ worldviews in parts of the world,
such as China, in spite of not being associated with any particular sym-
bolic attachment figure. These latter examples illustrate that the religion as
attachment idea should not be couched in universalist parlance. I hasten
to add in this context that a view of religion as an evolutionary by-prod-
uct (not an adaptation) (e.g., Granqvist, 2006; Kirkpatrick, 2005), which
capitalizes on the operation of other evolved systems (such as attachment),
does not necessitate universality for religion, let alone its “hijacking” of the
attachment system.
A more specific generalizability concern relating to the attachment-reli-
gion connection stems from the importance assigned in this literature to
radical religious changes, including sudden religious conversions. Modeled
on Saul’s/Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, such experiences could
be construed as unique to Christianity, and particularly to Protestantism
(see Hood et al., 2009). In other words, it should be questioned whether
insecure attachment would express itself in a propensity for such experi-
ences in other faith traditions. Nevertheless, a recent study of orthodox and
non-orthodox Jewish converts (compared with non-converts) replicated
a connection with an insecure attachment history with parents for those
raised unorthodoxly who converted to orthodox Judaism as well as for
those raised orthodox who converted to unorthodox Judaism (Pirutinsky,
Attachment and Religious Development 335

2009). Future studies should address whether these findings replicate out-
side of the monotheistic faith traditions. Studies addressing the possible
transfer of attachment components from parents to multiple deities, such
as are available within Hinduism, would also make a welcome contribution
to the literature.

Conclusions
In this chapter, I have argued that attachment theory is a viable frame-
work for understanding religious development and values in adolescence.
Adolescence was portrayed as a key period of developmental transitions both
for attachment and religion. In their growing push for autonomy from par-
ents, adolescents with an insecure attachment history are especially likely to
develop a surrogate attachment to God, via religious conversion experiences
and the like, and typically during a period of emotional turmoil. Other inse-
cure adolescents actively distance themselves from the religion of their par-
ents or come to embrace the diverse tenets of New Age spirituality, or engage
in “sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll” at levels that may pave the way for serious
adjustment problems. Most adolescents, however, and especially those with
a secure attachment history, go about their religious and spiritual business
without any notable fluctuations. They typically affirm the religious or non-
religious standards of their parents, while remaining emotionally close with
them. They may also experience gradual changes in religiousness, typically a
reaffirmation of the faith they grew up in, which tends to occur following the
formation of other important relationships in their lives, such as a romantic
relationship. Moreover, I noted that although there are notable exceptions,
religion in general, and religion as compensation in particular, may serve
as a protective factor on youth adjustment and values. Finally, although
cross-cultural considerations do not inevitably lead to marked changes in
the substantive conclusions of this chapter, they do suggest that some forms
of insecure attachment may be somewhat more common in some cultures
than in others, that cultures may differ somewhat in the timing of attach-
ment transfer from parents to peers, and that the religion as attachment idea
may be more applicable in some cultures than in others.
In closing, while many questions remain unanswered, especially con-
cerning cross-cultural generalizability of the connections proposed in this
chapter, I maintain that attachment theory offers a viable framework for
understanding the development of certain aspects of religion, adjustment,
and values among youth. I encourage other researchers to further explore
such links outside of the monotheistic faith traditions.
336 Granqvist

References

Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1967). Infancy in Uganda. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.


Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978) Patterns of attachment:
A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Allen, J. P. (2008). The attachment system in adolescence. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver
(Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd
Ed.) (pp. 419–435). New York: Guilford.
Argyle, M., & Beit-Hallahmi, B. (1975). The social psychology of religion. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Armsden, G. C., & Greenberg, M. T. (1987). The inventory of parent and peer attach-
ment: Individual differences and their relationship to psychological well-being.
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 16, 427–453.
Behrens, K. Y. (2004). A multifaceted view of the concept of amae: Reconsidering the
indigenous Japanese concept of relatedness. Human Development, 47, 1–27.
Behrens, K. Y., Hesse, E., & Main, M. (2007). Mothers’ attachment status as determined
by the Adult Attachment Interview predicts their 6-year-olds’ reunion responses: A
study conducted in Japan. Developmental Psychology, 43, 1553–1567.
Birman, D., & Poff, M. (2010). Acculturation gaps and family adjustment. International
Society for the Study of Behavioural Development Bulletin, Number 2 (Serial no.
58), 29–33.
Bowlby, J. (1969–1980) Attachment and loss: Vols. 1–3. New York: Basic Books.
  (1988). A secure base: Parent–child attachment and healthy human development. New
York: Basic Books.
Cassibba, R., Granqvist, P., Costantini, A., & Gatto, S. (2008). Attachment and God repre-
sentations among lay Catholics, priests, and religious: A matched comparison study
based on the Adult Attachment Interview. Developmental Psychology, 44, 1753–1763.
Cassidy, J., & Shaver, P. R. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and
clinical applications (2nd Ed.). New York: Guilford.
DeWolff, M. S., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (1997). Sensitivity and attachment: A meta-
analysis on parental antecedents of infant attachment. Child Development, 68,
571–591.
Durrett, M. E., Otaki, M., & Richards, P. (1984). Attachment and the mother’s percep-
tion of support from the father. International Journal of Behavioural Development,
7, 167–176.
Fraley, R. C., & Davis, K. E. (1997). Attachment formation and transfer in young adults’
close friendships and romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 4, 131–144.
Friedlmeier, W., & Granqvist, P. (2006). Attachment transfer among German and
Swedish adolescents: A prospective longitudinal study. Personal Relationships, 13,
261–279.
Gill, A., & Lundsgaarde, E. (2004). State welfare spending and religiosity: A cross-
national analysis. Rationality and Society, 16, 399–436.
Granqvist, P. (2002). Attachment and religiosity in adolescence: Cross-sectional and
longitudinal evaluations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 260–270.
  (2003). Attachment theory and religious conversions: A review and a resolution of
the classic and contemporary paradigm chasm. Review of Religious Research, 45,
172–187.
Attachment and Religious Development 337

  (2006). On the relation between secular and divine relationships: An emerging attach-
ment perspective and a critique of the depth approaches. The International Journal
for the Psychology of Religion, 16, 1–18.
Granqvist, P., Fransson, M., & Hagekull, B. (2009). Disorganized attachment, absorp-
tion, and New Age spirituality  – A mediational model. Attachment and Human
Development, 11, 385–403.
Granqvist, P., & Hagekull, B. (1999). Religiousness and perceived childhood attachment:
Profiling socialized correspondence and emotional compensation. Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion, 38, 254–273.
  (2001). Seeking security in the new age: On attachment and emotional compensation.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40, 529–547.
  (2003). Longitudinal predictions of religious change in adolescence: Contributions
from the interaction of attachment and relationship status. Journal of Social and
Personal Relationships, 20, 793–817.
Granqvist, P., Hagekull, B., & Ivarsson, T. (2012). Disorganized attachment promotes
mystical experiences via a propensity for alterations in consciousness (Absorption).
The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 22, 180–197.
Granqvist, P., Ivarsson, T., Broberg, A. G., & Hagekull, B. (2007). Examining rela-
tions between attachment, religiosity, and New Age spirituality using the Adult
Attachment Interview. Developmental Psychology, 43, 590–601.
Granqvist, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2004). Religious conversion and perceived child-
hood attachment: A meta-analysis. The International Journal for the Psychology of
Religion, 14, 223–250.
  (2008). Attachment and religious representations and behavior. In J. Cassidy & P. R.
Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications
(2nd Ed.) (pp. 906–933). New York: Guilford.
Granqvist, P., Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2010). Religion as attachment: Normative
processes and individual differences. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14,
49–59.
Grossmann, K., Grossmann, K. E., Spangler, K. Suess, G., & Unzner, L. (1985). Maternal
sensitivity and newborns’ orientation responses as related to quality of attachment
in northern Germany. Monographs of the Society of Research in Child Development,
50 (1–2, Serial No. 209), 231–233.
Grossmann, K. E., & Grossmann, K. (1989). Preliminary observations on Japanese
infants’ behavior in Ainsworth’s Strange Situation. Annual Report of the Research
and Clinical Center for Child Development, no. 13, 1–12.
Hall, G. S. (1904). Adolescence: Its psychology and relations to physiology, anthropology,
sociology, sex, crime, religion and education (2 Vols.). New York: Appleton.
Hill, P. C. (2002). Spiritual transformation: Forming the habitual center of personal
energy. Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, 13, 87–108.
Hood, R. W., Jr., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2009). The psychology of religion: An empirical
approach (4th Ed.). New York: Guilford.
Houtman, D., & Aupers, S. (2007). The spiritual turn and the decline of tradition: The
spread of post-Christian spirituality in 14 western countries, 1981–2000. Journal
for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46, 305–320.
James, W. (1902). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Longmans, Green.
338 Granqvist

Kildahl, J. P. (1965). The personalities of sudden religious converts. Pastoral Psychology,


16, 37–44.
Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2005). Attachment, evolution, and the psychology of religion. New
York: Guilford.
Knafo, A., & Schwartz, S. H. (2001). Value socialization in families of Israeli-born
and Soviet-born adolescents in Israel. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32,
213–228.
Kobak, R., & Ferenz-Gillies, R. (1995). Emotion regulation and depressive symptoms
during adolescence: A functionalist perspective. Development and Psychopathology,
7, 183–192.
Kobak, R., Ferenz-Gillies, R., Everhart, E., & Seabrook, L. (1994). Maternal attachment
strategies and emotion regulation with adolescent offspring. Journal of Research on
Adolescence, 4, 553–566.
Kobak, R. R., Cole, H. E., Ferenz-Gillies, R., & Fleming, W. S. (1993). Attachment and
emotion regulation during mother-teen problem solving: A control theory analy-
sis. Child Development, 64, 231–245.
Kupky, O. (1928). The religious development of adolescents. New York: MacMillan.
Lambert, W. W., Triandis, L. M., & Wolf, M. (1959). Some correlates of beliefs in the
malevolence and benevolence of supernatural beings: A cross-societal study.
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 162–169.
Lapsley, D. K., Rice, K. G., & Fitzgerald, D. P. (1990). Adolescent attachment, identity,
and adjustment to college: Implications for the continuity of adaptation hypothesis.
Journal of Counseling and Development, 68, 561–565.
Larson, R. W., & Verma, S. (1999). How children and adolescents spend time across the
world: Work, play, and developmental opportunities. Psychological Bulletin, 125,
701–736.
Main, M., Goldwyn, R., & Hesse, E. (2003). Adult attachment scoring and classification
systems. Unpublished manuscript, University of California at Berkeley.
Main, M., & Solomon, J. (1990) Procedures for identifying infants as disorganized/dis-
oriented during the Ainsworth Strange Situation. In M. T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti,
& E. M. Cummings (Eds.), Attachment in preschool years: Theory, research, and
intervention (pp. 121–160). Chicago: University of Chicago.
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007) Attachment patterns in adulthood: Structure,
dynamics, and change. New York: Guilford.
Miyake, K., Chen, S., & Campos, J. (1985). Infant temperament, mother’s mode of inter-
action, and attachment in Japan: An interim report. Monographs of the Society of
Research in Child Development, 50 (1–2, Serial No. 209), 276–297.
Moore, K. A., & Glei, D. (1995). Taking the plunge: An examination of positive youth
development. Journal of Adolescent Research, 10, 15–40.
Pargament, K. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping. New York: Guilford.
Pirutinsky, S. (2009). Conversion and attachment insecurity among Orthodox Jews. The
International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 19, 200–206.
Posada, G., Gao, Y., Wu, F., Posada, R., Tascon, M., Schoelmerich, A., … Lynnevaag, B.
(1995). The secure-base phenomenon across cultures: Children’s behavior, moth-
ers’ preferences and experts concepts. In E. Waters, B. E. Vaughan, G. Posada,
& K. Kondo-Ikemura (Eds.), Caregiving, cultural, and cognitive perspectives on
Attachment and Religious Development 339

s­ ecure-base behavior and working models (pp. 27–48). Chicago: Chicago University
of Chicago Press.
Resnick, M. D., Bearman, P. S., Blum, R. W., Bauman, K. E., Harris, K. M., Jones, J.,
… Udry, J. R. (1997). Protecting adolescents from harm: Findings from the
national longitudinal study on adolescent health. Journal of the American Medical
Association, 278, 823–832.
Rice, K. G. (1990). Attachment and adolescence: A narrative and meta-analytic review.
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 19, 511–538.
Richters, J. E., & Waters, E. (1991). Attachment and socialization: The positive side of
social influence. In M. Lewis & S. Feinman (Eds.), Social influences and socialization
in infancy (Genesis of Behavior Series, Vol. 6, pp. 185–213). New York: Plenum.
Rohner, R. P. (1986). The warmth dimension: Foundations of parental acceptance-rejec-
tion theory. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Roof, W. C., & McKinney, W. (1987). American mainline religion: Its changing shape and
future. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Rothbaum, F., Weisz, J., Pott, M., Miyake, K., & Morelli, G. (2000). Attachment and culture:
Security in the United States and Japan. American Psychologist, 55, 1093–1104.
Schlegel, A., & Barry, H., III. (1991). Adolescence: An anthropological inquiry. New York:
Free Press.
Schnitker, S. A., Porter, T. J., Emmons, R. A., & Barrett, J. L. (2012). Attachment predicts
adolescent conversions at Young Life religious summer camps. The International
Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 22, 198–215.
Smetana, J. G. (2002). Culture, autonomy, and personal jurisdiction in adolescent–par-
ent relationships. In R. V. Kail & H. W. Reese (Eds.), Advances in child development
and behavior (Vol. 29, pp. 51–87). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Smith, T. B., McCullough, M. E., & Poll, J. (2003). Religiousness and depression: Evidence
for a main-effect and the moderating influence of stressful life-events. Psychological
Bulletin, 129, 614–636.
Spellman, C. M., Baskett, G. D., & Byrne, D. (1971). Manifest anxiety as a contributing factor
in religious conversion. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 36, 245–247.
Sroufe, L. A., & Waters, E. (1977). Attachment as an organizational construct. Child
Development, 48, 1184–1199.
Starbuck, E. D. (1899). The psychology of religion. New York: Scribner.
Stayton, D., Hogan, R., & Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1971). Infant obedience and maternal behav-
ior: The origins of socialization reconsidered. Child Development, 42, 1057–1069.
Steinberg, L. (1990). Interdependency in the family: Autonomy, conflict, and har-
mony in the parent–adolescent relationship. In S. Feldman & G. Elliott (Eds.), At
the threshold: The developing adolescent (pp. 225–276). Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Steinberg, L. D., & Morris, A. S. (2001). Adolescent development. Annual Review of
Psychology, 52, 83–110.
Takahashi, K. (1986). Examining the strange-situation procedure with Japanese mothers
and 12-month-old infants. Developmental Psychology, 22, 265–270.
Tamminen, K. (1994). Religious experiences in childhood and adolescence: A viewpoint
of religious development between the ages of 7 and 20. The International Journal for
the Psychology of Religion, 4, 61–85.
340 Granqvist

Ullman, C. (1982). Change of mind, change of heart: Some cognitive and emotional
antecedents of religious conversion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
42, 183–192.
van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Sagi-Schwartz, A. (2008). Cross-cultural patterns of attach-
ment: Universal and contextual dimensions. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.),
Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd Ed.) (pp.
880–905). New York: Guilford.
van IJzendoorn, M. H., Schuengel, C., & Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J. (1999).
Disorganized attachment in early childhood: Meta-analysis of precursors, con-
comitants, and sequelae. Development and Psychopathology, 11, 225–250.
Weiss, R. S. (1982). Attachment in adult life. In C. M. Parkes & J. Stevenson-Hinde
(Eds.), The place of attachment in human behavior (pp. 171–184). New York: Basic
Books.
Youniss, J., McLelan, J. A., & Yates, M. (1999). Religion, community service, and identity
in American youth. Journal of Adolescence, 22, 243–253.
Zeifman, D., & Hazan, C. (2008). Pair bonds as attachments: Evaluating the evidence.
In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and
clinical applications (2nd Ed.) (pp. 906–933). New York: Guilford.
Zhang, H., Chan, D. K. S., & Teng, F. (2011). Transfer of attachment functions and
adjustment among young adults in China. The Journal of Social Psychology, 151,
257–273.
Zinnbauer, B. J., & Pargament, K. I. (1998). Spiritual conversion: A study of religious
change among college students. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37,
161–180.
15 Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Adolescents’
Religiosity and Family Orientation

Boris Mayer and Gisela Trommsdorff

Abstract
This chapter explores cultural and individual religious roots of adolescents’
family orientation on the basis of multilevel analyses with data from 17 cul-
tural groups. Religion and the family are seen as intertwined social insti-
tutions. The family as a source of social support has been identified as an
important mediator of the effects of religiosity on adolescent developmental
outcomes. The results of the current study show that religiosity was related to
different aspects of adolescents’ family orientation (traditional family values,
value of children, and family future orientation), and that the culture-level
effects of religiosity on family orientation were stronger than the individual-
level effects. At the cultural level, socioeconomic development added to the
effect of religiosity, indicating that societal affluence combined with nonre-
ligious secular orientations is linked to a lower family orientation, especially
with regard to traditional family values. The authors suggest that individual
religiosity may be of special importance for adolescents’ family orientation in
contexts where religiosity has lost some significance but religious traditions
are still alive and can be (re-)connected to.

Religion and the family represent closely linked social institutions. Both
function through psychological processes that may vary during develop-
ment and across cultures. Religious socialization takes place in families,
and religions in turn can influence family life. The focus of the current
chapter is on the relation between adolescents’ religiosity and their family
orientation. Taking a cross-cultural and multilevel perspective, we will
both theoretically and empirically explore three major questions: How are
adolescents similar or different across cultures with respect to the impor-
tance of religious beliefs and family orientation? How are adolescents’

341
342 Mayer and Trommsdorff

religiosity and family orientation related in different cultures? And, how


is nation-level religiosity as well as nation-level socioeconomic develop-
ment related to adolescents’ family orientation? We deal with these ques-
tions on the basis of data from the cross-cultural research project “Value
of Children and Intergenerational Relations” (Trommsdorff & Nauck,
2005).
Adolescence is a sensitive period for religious and spiritual develop-
ment. Because of the intermediate position between childhood and adult-
hood and the related insecurities, adolescents’ identity development comes
with an intense striving for meaning and a need for autonomy and relat-
edness (Erikson, 1968; Youniss & Smollar, 1985). Therefore, adolescents
often engage in religious and spiritual exploration (Elkind, 1964; Good
& Willoughby, 2008; Oser, Scarlett, & Bucher, 2006). According to Elkind
(1999), adolescents (especially those in Western societies) prefer an intense
personal religiosity and consider the formal aspects of religiousness (e.g.,
regular church attendance) to be less important (see also Lopez, Huynh,
& Fuligni, 2011). Therefore, our focus here is on adolescents’ subjective
importance subscribed to religious beliefs.
Numerous cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have shown that
religiosity is associated with better physical and mental health (George,
Ellison, & Larson, 2002; Hackney & Sanders, 2003). For adolescents,
Wagener, Furrow, King, Leffert, and Benson (2003) showed that religios-
ity was related to lower risk-taking, successful coping, and higher proso-
cial values and behavior (see also French, Eisenberg, Sallquist, & Purwono,
Chapter 6 in this volume). Similar results with respect to moral outcomes
(e.g., empathic concern and altruism) were reported by King and Furrow
(2004) and Youniss, McLellan, and Yates (1999).
As mechanisms or mediators of these effects, some studies have identi-
fied religion’s positive influences on social support, community inclusion,
and on a stable sense of identity (Cohen, 2002; George et al., 2002; Steger &
Frazier, 2005; Wagener et al., 2003). Critical voices argue that religion is not
the only source of these (secular) mediators and suggest that researchers
focus on the mediators themselves rather than on religion per se (Funder,
2002). On the contrary, Pargament (2002b) points to the unique effects of
religion emphasizing the “sacred” as a powerful defining feature of religion.
Furthermore, the kind of religious practice and religiosity also play a role:
whereas an intrinsically motivated religiosity has been positively linked to
well-being, an imposed and unexamined religiosity has been negatively
linked (Pargament, 2002a) (see also Kornadt, Chapter 2 in this volume;
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 343

Saroglou, Chapter 17 in this volume). Whether religion’s effects on adoles-


cent development are unique or mediated, there is no doubt that the family
as an essential source of social support plays an important role for the link
between religiosity and adolescent developmental outcomes (Regnerus &
Burdette, 2006; Sabatier, Mayer, Friedlmeier, Lubiewska, & Trommsdorff,
2011). Therefore, the focus of the current chapter is to understand the rela-
tions between adolescent religiosity and their family orientation. Before
dealing more closely with this issue, the necessity of a cross-cultural per-
spective will be emphasized.
Most studies on psychological functions of religiosity are based on
Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD, see
Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010) samples. The question arises as to
what extent (if at all) results based on these samples can be generalized
to adolescents from different cultural contexts. In spite of growing global
connections through the Internet along with the dissemination of main-
stream (North American) pop music and movies that have arguably led
to a universal popular youth culture (Dasen, 2000; Jensen, 2003; Schlegel,
2000), cross-cultural and cross-ethnic studies on several aspects of adoles-
cents’ lives show that large cultural differences still prevail (Brown, Larson,
& Saraswathi, 2002; Fuligni, Tseng, & Lam, 1999; Mayer & Trommsdorff,
2010). Furthermore, a globalized youth culture in modernizing, but in
large part still traditional, cultural contexts like India or China may be
restricted to adolescents from urban areas and a Western-oriented middle-
class youth. Even the concept of “emerging adulthood” may only hold for
Western developmental contexts (Arnett, 2010).
Few studies shed light on the function of religiosity for adolescent devel-
opment across cultures. In samples of African American and European-
American 11th graders, Markstrom (1999) found that various forms of
religious involvement were associated with indicators of ego strength and
psychosocial maturity. In a recent study comparing the mediating role of
adolescents’ family orientation in the relation between religiosity and life
satisfaction across four Christian cultures, Sabatier et al. (2011) found
that religiosity was indirectly related to adolescent life satisfaction via
family orientation across all four cultures (France, Germany, Poland, and
the United States). In a study of U.S. adolescents with Latin American,
Asian, and European backgrounds, Lopez, Huynh, and Fuligni (2011)
showed that regardless of religious and cultural background, changes in
adolescents’ religious identity were closely related to changes in their fam-
ily identity.
344 Mayer and Trommsdorff

Researchers have also taken cross-cultural perspectives on the role of


religion for the study of value orientations (see Bond, Lun, & Li, Chapter 5
in this volume; Schwartz, Chapter 4 in this volume). Values represent stan-
dards of behavior (“oughts” and “shoulds”) that are transmitted by various
social institutions, such as religion. Early studies on the relation between
religiosity and values found that religious participants reported a higher
importance of values like salvation, forgiveness, and obedience than did
nonreligious participants, who reported a higher importance of indepen-
dence, pleasure, and intellectualism (Rokeach, 1969). Later studies using
the Schwartz’ circumplex model of values tended to find similar associations
(e.g., Schwartz & Huismans, 1995). In a meta-analysis, Saroglou, Delpierre,
and Dernelle (2004) corroborated these findings across 21 samples from 15
countries and three denominations (Christians, Jews, and Muslims): higher
religiosity was positively related to values supporting the preservation of
the social order and to prosocial values whereas it was negatively related to
values promoting openness to change and autonomy as well as to hedonis-
tic values. These cross-cultural relations between religiosity and prosocial,
as well as socially conservative values, are related to the main question of
this chapter: what is the relation between adolescents’ religiosity and their
family orientation? Religion has been identified as a “propagator” of family
ideologies (Pearce & Thornton, 2007, p. 1227) which are in turn related to
family-relevant behaviors like the decision to have children (Barber, 2000).
The link between religiosity and family orientation is an understudied field
(Pankhurst & Houseknecht, 2000) and is especially important during the
transition to adulthood (Pearce & Thornton, 2007). We understand family
orientation as a construct encompassing traditional family values, values
of children, and the importance of a future family. This broad definition
allows us to study the effects of religiosity on several aspects of family ori-
entation including normative and subjective emotional aspects, and general
as well as personal future-oriented aspects.
The following empirical portion of this chapter consists of three sections.
First, we analyze cross-cultural similarities and differences in adolescents’
religiosity and their family orientation. Second, we focus on the relation
between religiosity and family orientation within different cultures and on
a potentially moderating role of culture-level religiosity for this relation.
The third section is concerned with culture-level effects of religiosity and of
a nation’s socioeconomic development on adolescents’ family orientation.
In all three sections we introduce the respective topic theoretically and sub-
sequently present results of cross-cultural and multilevel analyses from the
Value of Children Study.
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 345

Adolescents’ Religiosity and Family Orientation across Cultures:


The Roles of Secularization and Modernization
The cross-cultural study of the psychology of religion is an understudied
field (Tarakeshwar, Stanton, & Pargament, 2003). In this section, we will
first discuss the phenomenon of secularization and the related topic of the
transmission of religiosity in different cultural contexts. Then we will dis-
cuss to what degree modernization processes affect the significance of the
family across cultural contexts. Subsequently, we will introduce the sample
of the Value of Children Study and present cross-cultural empirical findings
on adolescents’ religiosity and family orientation.

Decline of Religiosity: The Secularization Thesis


The question of a decline of religiosity and a rise of secular orientations
is quite controversial (e.g., see Halman & Pettersson, 2006). In a large-
scale longitudinal study of religion and its intergenerational transmission,
Bengtson and colleagues analyzed the changes of religious beliefs, values,
and practices across three decades and three connected generations in the
United States (Bengtson, Copen, Putney, & Silverstein, 2009). From 1971
to 2000 there was a considerable decline of reported religious affiliation for
all three generations. This result is in line with the phenomenon of sec-
ularization, reflecting a continuous decline of religiosity in Western Europe
and the English-speaking world during the second half of the 20th cen-
tury (Inglehart & Baker, 2000). Secularization has been described as result-
ing from modernization, economic development, and individualization.
Though it is acknowledged that traditional religious values can persist to
some degree (Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Inkeles, 1998), some authors assume
that sooner or later all cultures will overcome traditional religious values
and come to prefer secular–rational and autonomous self-expressive values
(“human development sequence,” see Inglehart & Welzel, 2005).
This view has not been unchallenged. Georgas (2006) argues that the
thrust of modernization itself is based on religious and cultural values
that developed out of Calvinist Protestantism. In a similar vein, Eisenstadt
(1973) postulates that the development of transcendental religions during
the axial age (Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity,
and later Islam) are the basis of later modernization processes. According
to this view, axial civilizations are characterized by a tension between tran-
scendental and worldly orientations. This tension leads to the conception
of the world and human beings as in need of redemption and correction
or improvement. Instead of a single modernity as implicated by Inglehart’s
346 Mayer and Trommsdorff

model, Eisenstadt (2006) suggests the presence of multiple modernities


based on each culture’s unique way of dealing with this tension.
In a study of Christian societies with data from the International Social
Survey Programme, Höllinger and Haller (2009) conclude that although
traditional forms of religion have declined considerably in some cultures,
religion continues to play an important role in the public sphere as well as in
private life in other cultures. They argue that the worldviews and doctrines
of Protestantism have led to a greater “disenchantment of the world” (p.
281) and to a subsequent decline of religiosity as compared to Catholicism
and Orthodoxy (see also Georgas, 2006). Furthermore, bureaucratic state
churches (as in some Western European countries) and Communism in
Eastern Europe were related to lower religiosity. The historical significance
of religion in the United States owing to an emphasis on religious freedom
(in contrast with Europe) has possibly contributed to the relatively small
decline in the importance of religion in this country. A declining impor-
tance of religion has also been accorded to socioeconomic development:
economic prosperity and the rise of welfare state provisions can buffer exis-
tential risks related to religious needs. However, there is no direct link: in a
cross-cultural study, Georgas, van de Vijver, and Berry (2004) showed that
religion and economic prosperity (at the cultural level) were related to psy-
chological variables in different and partly contrasting ways.

Transmission of Religiosity: Family and Society


Closely related to the issue of religious decline or persistence is the ques-
tion of how religiosity and related value orientations are transmitted from
generation to generation within a specific cultural context (see also Knafo,
Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, & Shir, Chapter 16 in this volume). This question
has been studied from a socialization theoretical perspective focusing on
transmission processes between generations from the same family (verti-
cal transmission) and from a cohort approach focusing on the influence
of peers, culture, and the zeitgeist (i.e., the general intellectual and political
climate within a nation or cultural group) (horizontal and oblique trans-
mission). How do these transmission processes contribute to the decline
versus stability of religion in different cultural contexts?
According to Boyatzis, Dollahite, and Marks (2006) the factor with the
greatest impact on children’s religious development is the socialization
experience within the family. In their three-generation longitudinal study,
Bengtson et al. (2009) found that parents as well as grandparents substan-
tially influenced several aspects of their offspring’s religiosity. Thus, for
most adolescents, the importance of a specific religious belief is strongly
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 347

influenced by their family’s religious beliefs (see also Regnerus, Smith, &
Smith, 2004; Trommsdorff, 2009a). Kelley and De Graaf (1997) analyzed
the transmission of religious beliefs by way of parental socialization in 15
nations in the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). The focus
was on the moderating influence of the cultural religious environment on
how religious beliefs are transmitted across generations. The results showed
that after controlling for a nation’s level of economic development and for
exposure to Communism, “people living in religious nations will, in pro-
portion to the religiosity of their fellow-citizens, acquire more orthodox
beliefs than otherwise similar people living in secular nations” (p. 639).
Furthermore, in more secular nations, parents’ religiosity had a greater
impact on children’s religiosity, and the national religious context had a
smaller impact than in more religious nations. In turn, parents’ religiosity
was less related to child religiosity in cultures with a high normativity of
religion whereas the national context had a greater effect in these cultures.
Thus, the relative importance of vertical and horizontal/oblique transmis-
sion processes depends on the cultural context. In cultures where most
people are religious and where one specific religion prevails, the family is
only one among many socialization agents for religious beliefs. In these
societies, peers, schools, the media, and religious institutions contribute
to religious socialization and enculturation, building on the highly norma-
tive and shared collective notion of religious truth. As Baumeister (2002)
notes,
It is easier for an individual to maintain religious faith if he or she lives in a
community where everyone else holds that same faith [and] it is far more diffi-
cult to maintain one’s own faith while living amid people who do not share your
faith and who instead either subscribe to other, alternative religious beliefs or
reject religious belief altogether (p. 166).
Differential transmission processes depending on the nation-level reli-
gious context thus may reinforce a culture’s tendency to either change to
more secular values (as in the case of a plurality of religious beliefs and/or
an already lowered normativity of religion) or to keep religious values at a
constantly high level (as in the case of a high normativity and exclusivity of
one specific religion). Taken together, the above theorizing lets us expect
substantial cross-cultural differences in the religiosity of adolescents from
cultures that differ with regard to the normativity of religion, economic
development, and basic value orientations.
Because values regarding the family are deeply rooted in many religious
traditions, a parallel decline of family orientation can be expected for cul-
tures where religious beliefs are on the decline. Indeed, modernization
348 Mayer and Trommsdorff

theoretical approaches support this argument, but they are not uncon-
tended, as will be shown in the next section.

Modernization and Family Change


Discussion about the decline of the family can be traced back to the French
Revolution, which disturbed the equilibrium of the traditional extended
family system and patriarchal authority (according to Auguste Comte, as
cited in Georgas, 2006). Similarly, Parsons (1949) argued that the industrial
revolution required the formation of a nuclear family that became more
and more alienated from its extended kin network. There are manifold indi-
cators of this decline continuing today: an increasing number of single-
parent families; an increasing divorce rate; an increase of step-families and
patchwork families; and, most of all, a declining birth rate (Georgas, 2006;
Goode, 1963). The post-nuclear family (Popenoe, 1988) is characterized by
a further decreasing family size, fewer joint activities and less quality con-
tact between parents and children, and reduced contact with collateral kin
(e.g., aunts, nephews, etc.), but more contact with grandparents. According
to Bengtson (2001), this increasing importance of multigenerational bonds
may signify a qualitative change in family solidarity structures rather than a
decline of the family. Pankhurst and Houseknecht (2000) argue that in spite
of the manifold changes that religion and the family undergo in the modern
era, both institutions are not on the decline but still vital and important
in most societies, raising doubts with regard to the general validity of the
secularization thesis and the thesis of family decline.
Whereas it is commonly agreed that the above-mentioned indicators
reflect a weakening of familial bonds in modernized Western cultures, the
implications for modernizing non-Western cultures remain unclear. In
many modernizing societies, a trend toward a separate residence for the
nuclear conjugal family can be observed. However, can we also observe
a functional nucleation, or do the relationships to the extended kin net-
work stay intact (Inkeles, 1998)? In India, for example, the extended family
members are still psychologically and normatively connected to each other
despite being separated by large distances (Mishra, Mayer, Trommsdorff,
Albert, & Schwarz, 2005; Sinha, 1991).
Yang (1996) suggests that psychological change in modernization is
restricted to those cultural and psychological characteristics that are incom-
patible with a modern way of life. The question is here whether these charac-
teristics include a decline in personal closeness between family members and
kin as proposed by classical modernization theory (Inkeles & Smith, 1974).
Kagitcibasi (2007) contends that despite socioeconomic development, a shift
towards lower emotional closeness among family members is not taking
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 349

place in modernizing cultures. Rather, she postulates a shift toward a family


model of emotional interdependence in these cultures, characterized by con-
tinuing emotional interdependence but declining material interdependence
(and rising personal autonomy). Studies directly testing these assumptions
are rare. In a large study of families in 30 cultures, Georgas, Berry, van de
Vijver, Kagitcibasi, and Poortinga (2006) examined cross-cultural differ-
ences on a number of measures (family values, family roles, etc.) both from
the perspective of the ecocultural framework (e.g., Georgas et al., 2004) and
from Kagitcibasi’s theory of family change. Results showed that with socio-
economic development of a culture, family values became less traditional,
family networks and emotional cohesion less strong, and family roles less
expressive, in line with the expectations of the ecocultural framework. The
expectations with regard to Kagitcibasi’s model were also partly confirmed:
nuclear family relationships were close in modernizing cultures and even in
Western individualistic cultures, suggesting a trend to the emotionally inter-
dependent family model. Thus, modernization in terms of socioeconomic
development does have a weakening effect on the significance of the family in
society, but more traditional (hierarchical and patriarchal) aspects of the fam-
ily seem to be more affected than the importance of the family in general (see
also Trommsdorff, 2009b). A more direct test of the theory of family change
was carried out recently by Mayer, Trommsdorff, Kagitcibasi, and Mishra
(2012). Using mothers’ and adolescents’ data from three cultures in the Value
of Children Study (Germany, Turkey, and India), the authors identified three
patterns of family values that could be related to the three ideal-typical family
models suggested by Kagitcibasi (2007). Furthermore, the cross-cultural and
cross-generational differences with regard to these family value patterns were
in line with predictions based on the theory of family change.
To conclude, both socioeconomic development and the role of religion
have important implications for the role of the family in a culture. As previ-
ously discussed, however, socioeconomic development cannot be equated
with religious decline/secularization. In this sense, religious traditions may
be an important factor for canalizing changes brought about by moderniza-
tion processes. Consequently, both phenomena (socioeconomic develop-
ment and religion) are assumed to have unique effects on the significance
of the family in a society.

The Value of Children (VOC) Study


The data presented here is part of the cross-cultural and international research
project “Value of Children and Intergenerational Relations” (Trommsdorff
& Nauck, 2005), which studied family-related values, intergenerational rela-
tions and support, as well as family-related future orientation of adolescents
350 Mayer and Trommsdorff

in connected samples of families (grandmothers, mothers, and adolescents).


The data for the current chapter includes the adolescent samples from 17
cultural groups (see Table 15.1). In all cultures, participants were surveyed by
members of the local collaborating team, completing a questionnaire either
at home or in school. In cultures where strong urban–rural differences con-
tinue to exist (i.e., China, India, Indonesia, Poland, South Africa, and Turkey),
samples from both rural and urban areas were included. In all other cul-
tures, adolescents from suburban or urban regions were considered typical
for the cultures. The participants were between 12 and 23 years old, with 98
percent of the sample being between 13 and 19 years old (“teenagers”); the
overall mean age was 15.6 years (SD = 1.65 years). All adolescents over the
age of 20 came from Switzerland (M age: 19.8 years). Because participants’
ages differed significantly across cultural groups, age was included as a covari-
ate in all cross-cultural comparisons. Participants from Israel were all Jewish,
partly from secular and partly from Orthodox Jewish contexts. Participants
from South Africa were recruited from the Northern Sotho cultural group
(Limpopo Province), whose standard of living is considerably below the South
African average (Sam, Peltzer, & Mayer, 2005). There were two Indian sam-
ples: one from Northern India (Varanasi area), and one from Southern India
(Puducherry area). Because the two Indian samples are culturally diverse and
speak different languages (Hindi in the North, Tamil in the South) we consider
them as separate cultural groups for our analyses.
The cultures represent a wide range of economic development, consid-
erable differences in exposure to Communism, and in secular–rational
value orientations, all of which should be related to lower religiosity and
to a lower family orientation. To assess adolescents’ religiosity, we asked
for their religious belief/affiliation and for the importance of these religious
beliefs. The latter was a one-item measure, with ratings ranging from 1 (not
important at all) to 5 (very important); it was only to be answered if a spe-
cific religious belief was indicated before. If participants indicated that they
were not religious/had no religious affiliation, a value of 1 (not important
at all) was set a posteriori in the importance measure. Of the overall sam-
ple, 22 percent were Roman Catholic Christians, 9 percent were Protestant
Christians, 7 percent were Orthodox Christians, and 4 percent were of other
Christian denominations. Thirteen percent were affiliated to Islam; 12 per-
cent to Hinduism; 4 percent to Judaism; 2 percent to Buddhism, Shintoism,
Taoism or Confucianism; and 1 percent believed in Animism, Paganism or
reported a personal religious belief. The largest group of 26 percent reported
no religious belief (see Table 15.1 for further information).
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 351

Table 15.1.  Cultures, Sample Composition, and Religious Affiliation

Region/Country n % Female % Non- Highest Religious


religious Affiliation (%)1
North America
United States 337 64 12 Protestantism (58 %)
Europe
France 200 55 35 Roman Catholicism (58 %)
Germany 311 56 44 Roman Catholicism (26 %)
Switzerland 131 58 26 Roman Catholicism (28 %)
Italy 381 54 15 Roman Catholicism (84 %)
Poland 327 60 2 Roman Catholicism (94 %)
Czech Republic 260 100 79 Roman Catholicism (17 %)
Estonia 300 51 84 Protestantism (6 %)
Russia 334 54 12 Orthodox Christian
Church (86 %)
Middle East
Turkey 308 53 3 Islam (93 %)
Israel 194 63 9 Judaism (90 %)
Africa
South Africa 317 62 1 Protestantism (incl. Zion
Christian Church)
(48 %)
Southeast Asia
India (North) 300 51 1 Hinduism (94%)
India (South) 300 50 2 Hinduism (98%)
Indonesia 300 50 0 Islam (98 %)
East Asia
China 306 58 83 Confucianism (7%)
Japan 208 63 66 Buddhism (15 %)
Note: 1  Religious denomination indicated by the highest percentage of adolescents in the respective
culture (and its proportion in the full cultural sample), regardless of whether “No religion” was the
dominant category or not.

Adolescents’ Religiosity across Cultures.  A comparison of the importance


of adolescents’ religious beliefs yielded large cross-cultural differences with
culture explaining half of the variance in adolescents’ religiosity, F(16,
4610) = 285.30, p < .001, η2 = .50. Figure 15.1 shows that adolescents from
Indonesia reported the highest importance of religion, followed by Northern
Indian, South African, Polish, Turkish, and Southern Indian adolescents. An
importance of religion at or slightly below the midpoint of the scale was
reported by U.S., Israeli, Russian, and Italian adolescents. Swiss, French, and
German adolescents reported a low importance of religion and Japanese,
Czech, Chinese, and Estonian adolescents reported a very low importance of
352 Mayer and Trommsdorff

Boys Girls

4.5

3.5

2.5

1.5

1
)

y
a

)
SA

el

itz ly
nd

Es a
a
R an

lic
nd

er e
(S y
th

th

an
ric
di esi

si

ni
c
ke

Ita
ra

ub
la

an

hi
ch ap
la
or

ou

us
U

to
m
Af

Is
In Tur
n

C
er
Po
(N

ep
Fr

J
R
do

G
a

ut
In

Sw
di
So
In

ze
C
Figure 15.1.  Cultural and gender differences in the importance of religious beliefs.

religion. Gender and its interaction with culture each explained ≤ 1 percent
of the overall variance and are not considered in detail here.
Overall, adolescents from more prosperous nations reported to be less
religious than adolescents from less well-off nations. However, the consid-
erable differences between Western European and U.S. adolescents indi-
cate that economic development cannot be equaled with religious decline.
German adolescents’ low level of religiosity was additionally influenced by
the sample composition: one third of the German sample came from East
Germany, where the exposure to Communistic ideology resulted in a very
low level of religious affiliation. This can also be observed in two Eastern
European nations – Estonia and the Czech Republic – where an extremely
low level of religiosity was reported. Despite a similar Communist expe-
rience in Poland and Russia, a high level of religiosity was reported there.
In Poland, Catholicism helped to preserve the Polish national identity
during the Communist era, and in Russia, a revival of traditional values
has been observed during the last two decades (Höllinger & Haller, 2009;
Mayer, Kuramschew, & Trommsdorff, 2009; Stetsenko, 2002). Communism
has also had a diminishing effect on Chinese adolescents’ religiosity, but
here additional factors come into play. Many Chinese (still, and despite
Communism) adhere strongly to Confucian philosophy but do not regard
themselves as religious. A similar phenomenon with respect to Shintoist
or Daoist beliefs may be responsible for the very low level of Japanese
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 353

adolescents’ self-reported religiosity. Here, cultural differences in the mean-


ing of religion are relevant (see Trommsdorff, 2012).

Adolescents’ Family Orientation across Cultures.  As indicated above, ado-


lescents’ family orientation is operationalized here as entailing adolescents’
values with respect to (traditional) family relations, their value of children,
and their future orientation with regard to having their own family (Mayer &
Trommsdorff, 2010; Seginer, 2009). In the following sections, we introduce the
instruments measuring adolescents’ family orientation and present the results
of cross-cultural comparisons. The effects of gender and its interaction with cul-
ture will not be reported in detail because of negligible effect sizes (η2 ≤ .01).

•• Family Values are assessed using a 5-item scale that measures a tradi-
tional view on the family and family relationships based on Georgas’
(1991) scale. Sample items include: “We should honor and protect
our family’s reputation” and “Children should obey their parents.”
With the exception of South Africa (α = .45), the internal consisten-
cies (Cronbach’s alpha) were between .57 and .81 for the 17 cultures
in the study. The ANOVA showed that culture explained a substan-
tial amount of the variance of family values, F(16, 4695) = 84.53, p <
.001, η2 = .22. The highest importance of family values was reported
by South African adolescents; the lowest by Japanese adolescents (see
Figure 15.2).
•• Emotional Values of Children represent emotional reasons for hav-
ing children. Sample items include “Because it is a joy to have a small
baby” and “Because of the special feeling of love that develops between
a parent and a child.” The scale was developed for the Value of Children
Study (e.g., Arnold et al., 1975; Kagitcibasi, 1982; Schwarz, Chakkarath,
Trommsdorff, Schwenk, & Nauck, 2001). The cross-cultural construct
equivalence of the value of children dimensions has been demonstrated
(Mayer & Trommsdorff, 2010). Cronbach’s alphas of this 7-item scale
were between .72 and .89. The culture effect was relatively weak, F(16,
4692) = 23.44, p < .001, η2 = .07. The highest importance of emotional
values of children was reported by Southern Indian adolescents, and the
lowest by Israeli adolescents (see Figure 15.2).
•• Utilitarian–normative Values of Children combine economic–utilitarian
and social–normative reasons for having children (Kagitcibasi, 1982).
Example items include “To have one more person to help your family
economically” and “Because some of your older relatives feel that you
Family Values Emotional Value of Children

354
5 5
4.5 4.5
4 4
3.5 3.5
3 3
2.5 2.5
2 2
1.5 1.5
1 1
a h) ia h) ic d y a ia ly A el ia e y d n ) ) l
ric rt es ut bl an ke in ss Ita US sra ton anc an rlan apa th sia ey rth SA blic Italy nce and rica ssia and ina any nia pan rae
I r m J S ou one urk No
T (
U pu ra ol Af u erl Ch rm sto Ja Is
R
t
Af (No on So epu Pol Tur Ch Ru
Es F er itze ( e F P th itz e E
h a nd ( R
G w a Ind a R u G
u di I dia h
S di di ch Sw
So In In In So
In zec ze
C C

Utilitarian-normative Value of Children Family Future Orientation


5 5
4.5 4.5
4 4
3.5 3.5
3 3
2.5 2.5
2 2
1.5 1.5
1 1
) ) l ) d A h) e a ia y ia ia el d y n ic a
th ica rth sia sia nia ae nd ey ina SA aly blic an ce ny nd th
ou lan US ort anc fric nes rke uss ton ra rlan an apa ubl hin
Is C
S ou Afr No one us sto Isr ola urk Ch U It pu Jap ran rma erla
( d R E P T e F e itz (S Po (N Fr th A do Tu R Es e rm J ep
a
( th a
i In R G w a a u In itz Ge R
di ou d ch S di di Sw ch
In S In ze In In So
C ze
C

Figure 15.2.  Cultural differences in family orientation: Family Values, Emotional VOC, Utilitarian-normative VOC, and
Family Future Orientation.
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 355

should have more children.” With the exception of Southern Indian ado-
lescents (α = .55) Cronbach’s alphas for this 8-item scale were between
.68 and .86. There was a strong culture effect, F(16, 4692) = 180.88, p <
.001, η2 = .38. Southern Indian adolescents reported the highest impor-
tance of these values, and Swiss adolescents reported the lowest impor-
tance (see Figure 15.2).
•• Family Future Orientation indicates to what extent the statement “Family
will be the most important thing in my life; everything else will be less
important” corresponds with adolescents’ personal way of thinking on
a scale ranging from 1 (Not at all) to 5 (Quite a lot). Data from Italy was
not available for this variable. Cultural differences were substantial, F(15,
4306) = 27.73, p < .001, η2 = .15, with adolescents from Southern India
reporting the highest importance and adolescents from China reporting
the lowest importance of a future family.

Overall, the results indicate strong cultural differences for Family Values
and Utilitarian-normative Values of Children. As shown in Figure 15.2, these
differences are also substantially related to a culture’s level of religiosity and
economic prosperity, as cultures that were both highly religious and rela-
tively poor (Indonesia, South Africa, and the two Indian samples) reported
the highest family values and utilitarian–normative VOCs, whereas the
rather secular and wealthy Western European and East Asian cultures
(Japan) reported the lowest level of these values. Weaker differences were
found for Family Future Orientation and Emotional Values of Children. Here,
no relations with culture-level religiosity or economic prosperity are obvi-
ous from Figure 15.2. Thus, we may preliminarily conclude that a decreased
importance of the family as a consequence of modernization processes can
be observed with regard to the two more traditional and conservative–nor-
mative aspects of family orientation (family values and utilitarian–norma-
tive VOC), but not for the two aspects related to emotional closeness and
more personal issues (emotional VOC and family future orientation). In
the remainder of this chapter, we will examine and present concrete empiri-
cal evidence for this preliminary observation.
In the next section we turn to our main objective: analyzing the effect of
adolescents’ religiosity on their family orientation both within and across
cultures. Within cultures, we will explore how individual religiosity affects
the four aspects of family orientation (and how the religious context mod-
erates this influence); across cultures, we will analyze how the religious
context and other cultural characteristics are related to adolescents’ family
orientation at the cultural level.
356 Mayer and Trommsdorff

Relations between Religiosity and Family Orientation:


Multilevel Perspectives
The family may be the most important source of social capital for adoles-
cents and functions as an important mediator for the relation between reli-
giosity and well-being. Furthermore, the family plays an important role in
religious worldviews and religious moral doctrines (Dollahite, Marks, &
Goodman, 2004; Pankhurst & Houseknecht, 2000). Thus, as a cultural sys-
tem, religion shapes family values and can instill an “ethos” of the family
(Chatters & Taylor, 2005). Many religions (e.g., Islam, Judaism, most tradi-
tions in Christianity) pronounce family relations and specific family roles
and hierarchies as sacred. Moral directives derived from religious doctrines
(e.g., that children are advised to honor their parents) “can constitute a key
form of religious influence among youth” and can offer “purposes and pro-
cesses that have no direct equivalent within secular systems of meaning and
motivation” (Regnerus & Burdette, 2006, p. 178). The sanctification of fam-
ily relationships can have desirable implications for family life (Mahoney,
Pargament, Murray-Swank, & Murray-Swank, 2003). Taking the Christian
tradition as an example, many scriptures in the Bible (especially in the Old
Testament) affirm and authorize positive norms of filial obligations and
assistance to family members. The milestones of family life, such as birth
and marriage, are celebrated through religious rituals and ceremonies.
Most of the literature in the field is concerned with (1) possible links
between religion and parents’ marital and parental functioning and with
(2) the role of religion for the formation of family bonds. In these studies,
religion is often not only seen as a promoting factor for family cohesion,
but also as a potentially problematic authority legitimizing abusive forms
of parental discipline and domestic violence, especially in very traditional
families (see the review by Mahoney, 2010, based on studies with mainly
Christian denominations and U.S. samples). With regard to the perspec-
tive of adolescents, Agate, Zabriskie, and Eggett (2007) reported a positive
effect of family religiosity for family functioning (cohesion and adapt-
ability) in a U.S. sample with a diverse religious background. Using data
from the American National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health,
Regnerus and Burdette (2006) found that a growing religious salience over
time was consistently related to better family relations. Gamoran (1992)
found that U.S. Jewish adolescents’ synagogue attendance and their family
orientation were positively related. In a 31-year longitudinal study, Pearce
and Thornton (2007) found that mothers’ religious affiliation and religious
service attendance at the time when the child was born was significantly
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 357

positively related to various indicators of the child’s family ideology when


the child was 23 and 31 years old, respectively. Furthermore, they found
that the child’s own religiosity at age 18 was substantially related to his/her
family ideology at later ages.
Sabatier et al. (2011) found a weaker positive relation between adolescent
religiosity and family orientation in low-religiosity cultures as compared to
high-religiosity cultures. A similar moderating effect of the religious con-
text has been found for the link between religiosity and psychological well-
being (e.g., Lavric & Flere, 2008). As Okulicz-Kozaryn (2010) summarizes,
“religiosity makes people happier in religious nations” (p. 166). However,
only forms of religiosity that promote social capital were related to higher
life satisfaction in this study (Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2010). Thus, sharing reli-
gious norms to a substantial degree within a cultural context seems to have
a positive effect on the links between individual religiosity, well-being, and
family orientation. With regard to the latter, the impact of personal religios-
ity on one’s views about the family may be stronger in highly religious con-
texts than in contexts where religious norms are not as widely shared. This
does not mean that in more secular contexts religious adolescents may not
have strong family commitments, but rather that other (nonreligious) path-
ways to valuing familial bonds may be more important in these contexts.
In secular cultures, scientific (psychological and educational) theories such
as attachment theory as well as political ideologies emphasize the impor-
tance of family life. These provide messages regarding how to maintain and
enhance good parental and marital relationships as well as how to create
a sense of connectedness in the family (see Agate et al., 2007; Mahoney,
2005).

Individual-Level Relations between Religiosity and Family


Orientation and the Moderating Role of Religious Context
Based on the theorizing presented above, we expected that religiosity would
be related to our measures of family orientation in all cultures, but that the
relation may be stronger for cultures with a high normativity of religious
beliefs.
In 13 of the 17 cultures studied, a significant positive correlation was
observed between adolescents’ religiosity and their family values (see Table
15.2). With one exception, the nonsignificant correlations occurred in the
cultures with the lowest average importance of religion. For the emotional
value of children, significant positive correlations with adolescents’ religi-
osity were found in six cultures. The relations were rather weak with the
exception of the United States (r = .33). Even weaker relations were found
358 Mayer and Trommsdorff

Table 15.2.  Relationships between Religiosity and Different Measures of Family


Orientation in Different Cultures

Culture Family Values Emotional Utilitarian– Family Future


VOC normative Orientation
VOC
Indonesia .17** .06 .10+ .04
India (North) .16** .15* .22*** .20***
South Africa .29*** .09 .11+ .03
Poland .40*** .07 .08 .29***
Turkey .18** .17** .13* .16**
India (South) .06 .05 .09 .05
United States .29*** .33*** .04 .24***
Israel .23** .09 –.13+ .03
Russia .28*** .22*** .25*** .17**
Italy .27*** .12* .21*** na
Switzerland .25** .22* .16+ .21*
France .30*** .07 .12 .15*
Germany .20*** .08 –.04 .24***
Japan .15* .10 .12+ .10
Czech Republic .08 –.05 –.03 –.02
China .03 .01 .08 .04
Estonia .04 .02 .01 .04
Note:  Pearson correlations. Cultures ordered according to average importance of religion in
descending order from top to bottom. na: not available.
+ p < .10. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

between the utilitarian–normative value of children and adolescents’ reli-


giosity. Here, only 4 out of 17 correlations were positively significant. In
eight cultures, adolescents reporting higher religiosity also reported a
higher family future orientation than did adolescents reporting a lower
religiosity.
Thus, highly religious adolescents were overall more family-oriented
than were less religious or nonreligious adolescents, although the relations
were not very strong. For cultures with a very low average level of religiosity
(Japan, China, Czech Republic, and Estonia), hardly any significant rela-
tions resulted. Also, it seems that in cultures with a medium level of religi-
osity (Switzerland, Italy, Russia, Israel, and the United States) adolescents’
religiosity was more positively related to their family orientation than it was
in cultures with a very low or a very high level of religiosity. Therefore, we
may hypothesize that in addition to a linear relationship between culture-
level religiosity and the size of the individual-level effect of religiosity on
adolescents’ family orientation, there may be a negative quadratic effect
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 359

signifying an attenuation of the (linear) moderating function for highly


religious cultures. In other words, the individual-level effect of religiosity
on family orientation may be especially relevant in cultures with a moder-
ate level of religiosity. In secular, low-religiosity cultures, adolescents’ fam-
ily orientation may be fueled by other cultural institutions (including the
family), as previously suggested. In cultures with a very high normativity of
religious beliefs, the relationship between personal levels of religiosity and
family orientation may be weaker than in moderately religious cultures. In
this case, personal religiosity may play only a minor role for adolescents’
family orientation because the latter is strongly influenced by highly nor-
mative cultural expectations. The more various socialization agents (e.g.,
family, school, church, media) simultaneously favor religion and traditional
family views, the less relevant individual differences in religiosity may be
for family-related values and attitudes.
To test these assumptions, we computed random coefficient multilevel
analyses with linear and quadratic cross-level interactions. Adolescents’
religiosity was included group-centered (per culture) to separate individ-
ual-level and culture-level variation. The covariates gender and age were
included in all models but their effects will not be presented since they were
small for all variables. The program HLM 6.08 was used employing full
maximum likelihood estimation. We omit technical information regarding
the denotation of coefficients in multilevel models (for more information
on multilevel models in cross-cultural psychology, see Nezlek, 2010).
The average within-culture effect of adolescents’ religiosity on their fam-
ily orientation was significantly positive for all four aspects of family orien-
tation and the cross-cultural variations of this effect (variance component
or random effect of slope) were also all significant.1 In these models, adoles-
cents’ religiosity explained relatively small amounts of the level-1 variance
of the different aspects of family orientation (5.4 percent for family val-
ues, 1.5 percent for emotional VOC, 1.5 percent for utilitarian–normative
VOC, and 1.9 percent for family future orientation). To test the modera-
tion hypotheses, we included linear and quadratic cross-level interactions
of culture-level religiosity with the individual-level effect of religiosity in all
models (slope-as-outcome models). Results showed positive linear cross-
level interactions for family values (Coeff. = 0.03, SE = 0.01, p < .05) and
for the emotional VOC (Coeff. = 0.03, SE = 0.01, p = .05), indicating stron-
ger individual-level relations between religiosity and family orientation in
cultures with higher average religiosity. A trend-level negative quadratic
cross-level interaction resulted for family values (Coeff. = -0.02, SE = 0.01,
p = .08), indicating that the linear moderation may be attenuated with high
360 Mayer and Trommsdorff

culture-level religiosity for this variable. All further cross-level interactions


were nonsignificant.
To summarize, adolescents’ religiosity was significantly related to all four
aspects of their family orientation. For family values and emotional VOC,
this relation was weaker for cultures with a low level of religiosity; for fam-
ily values, highly religious cultures may exhibit slightly lower relations than
moderately religious cultures.
In addition to a moderating effect of the cultural normativity of reli-
gion on the relevance of adolescents’ religiosity for their family orientation,
culture-level religiosity may also be directly linked to adolescents’ family
orientation. This is the topic of the following section.

Culture-Level Relations between Religiosity, Socioeconomic


Development, and Adolescents’ Family Orientation
In this section, we take up our earlier reasoning regarding the interrelations
among secularization, economic development, and family change. How are
the culture-level importance of religion and the importance of the fam-
ily related across cultures? To what degree can economic development add
uniquely to the explanation of family orientation?
In the random coefficient multilevel analyses, the primary predictor
variable at the cultural level is adolescents’ religiosity aggregated from indi-
vidual scores. Thus, the same variable was used at the individual and at
the cultural level (Fontaine, 2008; van de Vijver, van Hemert, & Poortinga,
2008). In addition to religiosity, the Human Development Index (HDI, see
United Nations Development Programme, 2010) was included as a culture-
level predictor.2 The HDI is a good proxy for a culture’s level of socioeco-
nomic development.
In the following, the focus is on a summary of the culture-level fixed
effects (intercept-as-outcome models) and their explanatory power (see
Table 15.3). The results showed significant culture-level effects of the HDI
and of Religiosity on adolescents’ family values (see Table 15.3, Model
1). The higher the HDI, the lower were adolescents’ family values; and
the higher the culture-level religiosity, the higher were the family values.
Together, HDI and religiosity explained 66 percent of the cross-cultural dif-
ferences in adolescents’ family values. For the emotional VOC, culture-level
religiosity was related to higher emotional VOC, explaining 46 percent of
the cross-cultural differences in emotional VOC, whereas the HDI had no
significant effect. For the utilitarian–normative VOC, a significant negative
effect resulted for the HDI and a significant positive effect resulted for religi-
osity, indicating a higher importance of the utilitarian–normative VOC for
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 361

Table 15.3.  Culture-Level Effects in Multilevel Analyses with HDI and Religiosity
Predicting Different Aspects of Adolescents’ Family Orientation

Coeff. SE T df
Family Values
HDI −1.18 .44 −2.71* 14
Religiosity 0.12 .05 3.09** 14
Emotional VOC
HDI −0.42 .38 −1.11 14
Religiosity 0.10 .04 2.40* 14
Utilitarian–normative VOC
HDI −3.77 .51 −7.36*** 14
Religiosity 0.16 .06 2.92* 14
Family Future Orientation
HDI −0.24 .56 −0.42 13
Religiosity 0.21 .06 3.53** 13

adolescents from religious cultures and a lower importance of this measure


for adolescents from affluent cultures. Together, the HDI and culture-level
religiosity explained 88 percent of the cross-cultural differences in adoles-
cents’ utilitarian–normative VOC.
Last, for family future orientation, whereas the HDI was unrelated to
this outcome variable, a significant positive effect of religiosity resulted that
explained 57 percent of the cultural differences in family future orienta-
tion. Thus, adolescents from religious cultures had a higher family future
orientation.
To summarize the culture-level effects, whereas culture-level religiosity
was positively related to all aspects of family orientation, the level of socio-
economic development (HDI) of a culture was negatively related (only) to
adolescents’ traditional family values and to their utilitarian–normative
VOC. Thus, overall, adolescents from more religious and less economically
developed cultures were more family-oriented than were adolescents from
less religious and richer cultures. However, although religiosity seems to be
strongly related to all aspects of adolescents’ family orientation, economic
development seems to affect only the conservative aspects of family ori-
entation as reflected in traditional family values and utilitarian–normative
reasons for having children. Thus, religiosity is strongly related to an over-
all importance of the family independent of economic development, and
economic development seems to weaken only traditional aspects of family
orientation whereas other aspects like the wish to have an own family in
362 Mayer and Trommsdorff

the future and the importance of emotional bonds parents have with their
children remain stable.

Conclusions
The family as a potential source of social and cultural capital, as a safe
haven, and as the central place to satisfy basic needs of human dependency
represents an important mediating link in the relation between religiosity
and well-being. The results presented here indicate that living in a religious
culture and personally being religious are both related to a higher family
orientation for adolescents. Religiosity may be especially beneficial for ado-
lescents’ family orientation in moderately religious cultures where a plural-
ity of worldviews exist, ranging from secular to very religious beliefs. In this
sense, individual religiosity may act as a buffer for a decreasing significance
of the family. However, the effects of individual religiosity on family ori-
entation were rather weak when compared to the culture-level effects of
religiosity. The results also showed that the presence of economic develop-
ment and secularization in a culture have to be considered independently
for predicting adolescents’ family orientation: Economic development is
clearly linked to processes that release or disconnect adolescents from tra-
ditional, hierarchical, and obedience-related views on the family, but it does
not contribute to a loss of significance of the family per se. When a high
level of societal affluence is combined with a low level of societal religiosity,
however, all aspects of adolescents’ family orientation seem to suffer.
Limitations in the present study include the sole reliance on adoles-
cents’ reported importance of religion, not distinguishing between reli-
gious denominations. Also, our results from cross-sectional studies cannot
indicate cultural change (Thornton, 2005). Further research has to look
deeper into the culture-specific aspects of religiosity and its role in ado-
lescent development (Belzen, 2010). Nevertheless, religions share features
of spirituality and normativity, rendering religiosity a unique aspect of the
adolescent experience across cultures. Although we emphasize the family-
consolidating effects of religion, this does not mean that religiosity (or spe-
cific kinds of religiosity) cannot also have negative impacts on adolescents’
family life, such as when adolescents convert to fundamentalist forms of
religiosity that are not in line with the religious beliefs emphasized in their
family of origin; nor do we contend that being nonreligious is necessarily
related to a low family orientation.
Providing adolescents with opportunities to (re-)discover religiosity for
their personal lives may be especially relevant in cultural contexts where
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 363

religion has lost some of its significance but individuals can relatively easily
reconnect to resources from religious traditions. In these cultures, religion
is only one of many possible life orientations, but it may be a powerful one
that can satisfy basic needs for relatedness and agency (Baumeister & Leary,
1995; Rothbaum & Trommsdorff, 2007) and fill a void of meaning. In this
sense, the cultural and religious context and the fit of developmental path-
ways within these contexts have to be taken into account in research and
interventions with regard to adolescent religiosity and family orientation.

Authors’ Note

This study is part of the of the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research


project “Value of Children and Intergenerational Relations.” Principal
investigators: Gisela Trommsdorff, University of Konstanz, Germany, and
Bernhard Nauck, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. For seven
countries (People’s Republic of China, Germany, Indonesia, Israel and the
Palestinian Authority, Poland, Turkey, United States), the study was funded
by the German Research Foundation (TR 169/9–1, -2, -3 and NA 164/9–
1, -3, -4). In Northern India (Varanasi), the study was co-funded by the
University of Konstanz and the German Research Foundation. In Southern
India (Puducherry), the study was funded by the Chemnitz University of
Technology; in the Czech Republic by the Masaryk University, Brno; in
Estonia by the European Social Fund Measure 1.4 “Enhancing Administrative
Capacity”; in France by the University Victor Segalen, Bordeaux; in Russia by
the Lobatchevskij State University, Nizhnij Novgorod; and in South Africa by
the University of Limpopo. We would like to thank the collaborators who car-
ried out the study in the respective countries: Gang Zheng, Shaohua Shi, and
Hong Tang, People’s Republic of China; Ivo Mozny and Petr Pakosta, Czech
Republic; Kairi Kasearu, Estonia; Colette Sabatier and Lyda Lannegrand-
Willems, France; Bernhard Nauck, Beate Schwarz, Daniela Klaus, Jana
Suckow, and Isabelle Albert, Germany; Ramesh Mishra, Northern India;
Arun Tipandjan, Southern India; Lieke Wisnubrata, Samsunuwijati Marat,
Kusdwiratri Setiono, and Peter R. Nelwan, Indonesia; Asher Ben-Arieh and
Muhammad M. Haj-Yahia, Israel and the Palestinian Authority; Katarzyna
Lubiewska, Poland; Zaretkhan Kh. M. Saralieva, Vladimir A. Blonin, and
Alexandre A. Iudin, Russia; Karl Peltzer, South Africa; Cigdem Kagitcibasi
and Bilge Ataca, Turkey; Wolfgang Friedlmeier and Mihaela Friedlmeier,
United States. Data from Italy was collected by Daniela Barni as part of her
doctoral dissertation supervised by Eugenia Scabini, Catholic University of
Milan, Italy. Data from Japan was collected by Chiaki Yamada as part of her
364 Mayer and Trommsdorff

master’s thesis supervised by Collette Sabatier, University Victor Segalen,


France. Data from Switzerland was collected by Karen Fux as part of her
diploma thesis supervised by Gisela Trommsdorff, University of Konstanz,
Germany. The authors would like to thank Tobias Heikamp for valuable
comments on an earlier version of the manuscript and Holly Bunje for her
assistance in language editing.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Boris
Mayer, Department of Psychology, P.O. Box 31, University of Konstanz,
D-78457 Konstanz, Germany. E-mail: boris.mayer@uni-konstanz.de

Notes

1. Family Values (Coeff. = 0.10, SE = 0.01, p < .001; Var. Comp. χ2 = 53.69, p < .001);
Emotional VOC (Coeff. = 0.06, SE = 0.01, p < .001; Var. Comp. χ2 = 33.56, p < .001);
Utilitarian–normative VOC (Coeff. = 0.07, SE = 0.02, p < .001; Var. Comp. χ2 = 44.70,
p < .001); Family Future Orientation (Coeff. = 0.12, SE = 0.02, p < .001; Var. Comp. χ2 =
34.79, p < .01).
2. Culture-Level Religiosity and the HDI were substantially correlated (r = −.53) but are
far from representing collinear variables.

References

Agate, S. T., Zabriskie, R. B., & Eggett, D. L. (2007). Praying, playing and successful fam-
ilies: An examination of family religiosity, family leisure, and family functioning.
Marriage & Family Review, 42, 51–75.
Arnett, J. J. (2010). Emerging adulthood(s): The cultural psychology of a new life stage.
In L. A. Jensen (Ed.), Bridging cultural and developmental approaches to psychol-
ogy: New syntheses in theory, research, and policy (pp. 255–275). New York: Oxford
University Press.
Arnold, F., Bulatao, R. A., Buripakdi, C., Chung, B. J., Fawcett, J. T., Iritani, T., … Wu, T.
S. (1975). The value of children. A cross-national study (Vol. 1). Honolulu, HI: East-
West Population Institute.
Barber, J. S. (2000). Ideational influences on the entry into parenthood: Mothers’ prefer-
ences for family and nonfamily behaviors. Social Forces, 79, 319–348.
Baumeister, R. F. (2002). Religion and psychology: Introduction to the special issue.
Psychological Inquiry, 13, 165–167.
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong – desire for interpersonal attach-
ments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.
Belzen, J. A. (2010). Psychology of religion: Perspectives from cultural psychology.
Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 13, 329–347.
Bengtson, V. L. (2001). Beyond the nuclear family: The increasing importance of multi-
generational bonds. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 63, 1–16.
Bengtson, V. L., Copen, C. E., Putney, N. M., & Silverstein, M. (2009). A longitudinal
study of the intergenerational transmission of religion. International Sociology, 24,
325–345.
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 365

Boyatzis, C. J., Dollahite, D. C., & Marks, L. D. (2006). The family as a context for reli-
gious and spiritual development in children and youth. In E. C. Roehlkepartain, P.
E. King, L. Wagener, & P. L. Benson (Eds.), The handbook of spiritual development
in childhood and adolescence (pp. 297–309). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Brown, B. B., Larson, R. W., & Saraswathi, T. S. (Eds.). (2002). The world’s youth:
Adolescence in eight regions of the globe. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Chatters, L. M., & Taylor, R. J. (2005). Religion and families. In V. L. Bengtson, A. C.
Acock, K. R. Allen, P. Dilworth-Anderson, & D. M. Klein (Eds.), Sourcebook of
family theory & research (pp. 517–541). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Cohen, A. B. (2002). The importance of spirituality in well-being for Jews and Christians.
Journal of Happiness Studies, 3, 287–310.
Dasen, P. (2000). Rapid social change and the turmoil of adolescence: A cross-cultural
perspective. International Journal of Group Tensions, 29, 17–49.
Dollahite, D. C., Marks, L. D., & Goodman, M. (2004). Family and religious beliefs, prac-
tices, and communities: Linkages in a diverse and dynamic cultural context. In M.
J. Coleman & L. H. Ganong (Eds.), Handbook of contemporary families: Considering
the past, contemplating the future (pp. 411–431). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (Ed.). (1973). Post-traditional societies. New York: Norton.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (2006). The great revolutions and the civilizations of modernity. Leiden,
The Netherlands: Brill.
Elkind, D. (1964). Age-changes in the meaning of religious identity. Review of Religious
Research, 6, 36–40.
  (1999). Religious development in adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 22, 291–295.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, youth, and crisis. New York: Norton.
Fontaine, J. R. J. (2008). Traditional and multilevel approaches in cross-cultural research:
An integration of methodological frameworks. In F. J. R. van de Vijver, D. A. van
Hemert, & Y. H. Poortinga (Eds.), Multilevel analysis of individuals and cultures
(pp. 65–92). New York: Erlbaum.
Fuligni, A. J., Tseng, V., & Lam, M. (1999). Attitudes toward family obligations among
American adolescents with Asian, Latin American, and European backgrounds.
Child Development, 70, 1030–1044.
Funder, D. C. (2002). Why study religion? Psychological Inquiry, 13, 213–214.
Gamoran, A. (1992). Religious participation and family values among American Jewish
youth. Contemporary Jewry, 13, 44–59.
Georgas, J. (1991). Intrafamily acculturation of values in Greece. Journal of Cross-
Cultural Psychology, 22, 445–457.
  (2006). Families and family change. In J. Georgas, J. W. Berry, F. J. R. van de Vijver, C.
Kagitcibasi, & Y. H. Poortinga (Eds.), Families across cultures (pp. 3–50). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Georgas, J., Berry, J. W., van de Vijver, F. J. R., Kagitcibasi, C., & Poortinga, Y. H. (Eds.).
(2006). Families across cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Georgas, J., van de Vijver, F. J. R., & Berry, J. W. (2004). The eco-cultural framework,
ecosocial indicators and psychological variables in cross-cultural research. Journal
of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 35, 74–96.
George, L. K., Ellison, C. G., & Larson, D. B. (2002). Explaining the relationships between
religious involvement and health. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 190–200.
366 Mayer and Trommsdorff

Good, M., & Willoughby, T. (2008). Adolescence as a sensitive period for spiritual devel-
opment. Child Development Perspectives, 2, 32–37.
Goode, W. J. (1963). World revolution and family patterns. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Hackney, C., & Sanders, G. S. (2003). Religiosity and mental health: A meta analysis of
recent studies. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 42, 43–55.
Halman, L. C. J. M., & Pettersson, T. (2006). A decline of religious values? In P. Ester,
M. Braun, & P. Mohler (Eds.), Globalization, value change, and generations (pp.
31–59). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world?
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61–135.
Höllinger, F., & Haller, M. (2009). Decline or persistence of religion? Trends in religi-
osity among Christian societies around the world. In M. Haller, R. Jowell, & T. W.
Smith (Eds.), The International Social Survey Programme 1984–2009: Charting the
globe (pp. 281–301). London: Routledge.
Inglehart, R., & Baker, W. E. (2000). Modernization, cultural change, and the persistence
of traditional values. American Sociological Review, 65, 19–51.
Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The
human development sequence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Inkeles, A. (1998). One world emerging. Convergence and divergence in industrial socie-
ties. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Inkeles, A., & Smith, D. H. (1974). Becoming modern: Individual change in six developing
countries. London: Heinemann.
Jensen, L. A. (2003). Coming of age in a multicultural world: Globalization and adoles-
cent cultural identity formation. Applied Developmental Science, 7, 189–196.
Kagitcibasi, C. (1982). Old-age security value of children: Cross-national socioeconomic
evidence. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 13, 29–42.
  (2007). Family, self, and human development across cultures: Theory and applications
(2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kelley, J., & De Graaf, N. D. (1997). National context, parental socialization, and reli-
gious belief: Results from 15 nations. American Sociological Review, 62, 639–659.
King, P. E., & Furrow, J. L. (2004). Religion as a resource for positive youth develop-
ment: Religion, social capital, and moral outcomes. Developmental Psychology, 40,
703–713.
Lavric, M., & Flere, S. (2008). The role of culture in the relationship between religiosity
and psychological well-being. Journal of Religion & Health, 47, 164–175.
Lopez, A. B., Huynh, V. W., & Fuligni, A. J. (2011). A longitudinal study of reli-
gious identity and participation during adolescence. Child Development, 82,
1297–1309.
Mahoney, A. (2005). Religion and conflict in marital and parent–child relationships.
Journal of Social Issues, 61, 689–706.
  (2010). Religion in families, 1999–2009: A relational spirituality framework. Journal
of Marriage and the Family, 72, 805–827.
Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Murray-Swank, A., & Murray-Swank, N. (2003). Religion
and the sanctification of family relationships. Review of Religious Research, 44,
220–236.
Markstrom, C. A. (1999). Religious involvement and adolescent psychosocial develop-
ment. Journal of Adolescence, 22, 205–221.
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 367

Mayer, B., Kuramschew, A., & Trommsdorff, G. (2009). Familienbezogene Werte


und Zukunftsvorstellungen in der Adoleszenz: Ein deutsch-russischer Vergleich
[Family-related values and future orientation in adolescence: A German-Russian
comparison]. Zeitschrift für Soziologie der Erziehung und Sozialisation, 29,
29–44.
Mayer, B., & Trommsdorff, G. (2010). Adolescents’ value of children and their intentions
to have children: A cross-cultural and multilevel analysis. Journal of Cross-Cultural
Psychology, 41, 671–689.
Mayer, B., Trommsdorff, G., Kagitcibasi, C., & Mishra, R. C. (2012, April 5). Family
models of independence/interdependence and their intergenerational similarity
in Germany, Turkey, and India. Family Science. Advance online publication. doi:
10.1080/19424620.2011.671503.
Mishra, R. C., Mayer, B., Trommsdorff, G., Albert, I., & Schwarz, B. (2005). The value of
children in urban and rural India: Cultural background and empirical results. In G.
Trommsdorff & B. Nauck (Eds.), The value of children in cross-cultural perspective:
Case studies from eight societies (pp. 143–170). Lengerich: Pabst Science.
Nezlek, J. B. (2010). Multilevel modeling and cross-cultural research. In D. Matsumoto
& F. J. R. van de Vijver (Eds.), Cross-cultural research methods in psychology (pp.
299–347). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Okulicz-Kozaryn, A. (2010). Religiosity and life satisfaction across nations. Mental
Health, Religion & Culture, 13, 155–169.
Oser, F. K., Scarlett, W. G., & Bucher, A. (2006). Religious and spiritual development
throughout the lifespan. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol.
1. Theoretical models of human development (6th ed., pp. 942–998). Hoboken, NJ:
Wiley.
Pankhurst, J. G., & Houseknecht, S. K. (2000). Introduction: The religion-family link-
age and social change  – a neglected area of study. In S. K. Houseknecht & J. G.
Pankhurst (Eds.), Family, religion, and social change in diverse societies (pp. 1–40).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pargament, K. I. (2002a). The bitter and the sweet: An evaluation of the costs and ben-
efits of religiousness. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 168–181.
  (2002b). Is religion nothing but …? – Explaining religion versus explaining religion
away. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 239–244.
Parsons, T. (1949). The social structure of the family. In R. N. Anshen (Ed.), The family:
Its functions and destiny (pp. 33–58). New York: Harper.
Pearce, L. D., & Thornton, A. (2007). Religious identity and family ideologies in the
transition to adulthood. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 69, 1227–1243.
Popenoe, D. (1988). Disturbing the nest: Family change and decline in modern societies.
Chicago: Aldine.
Regnerus, M. D., & Burdette, A. (2006). Religious change and adolescent family dynam-
ics. Sociological Quarterly, 47, 175–194.
Regnerus, M. D., Smith, C., & Smith, B. (2004). Social context in the development of
adolescent religiosity. Applied Developmental Science, 8, 27–38.
Rokeach, M. (1969). Value systems and religion. Review of Religious Research, 11,
2–23.
Rothbaum, F., & Trommsdorff, G. (2007). Do roots and wings complement or oppose
one another? The socialization of relatedness and autonomy in cultural context. In
368 Mayer and Trommsdorff

J. E. Grusec & P. Hastings (Eds.), The handbook of socialization (pp. 461–489). New
York: Guilford.
Sabatier, C., Mayer, B., Friedlmeier, M., Lubiewska, K., & Trommsdorff, G. (2011).
Religiosity, family orientation, and life satisfaction of adolescents in four countries.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 1375–1393.
Sam, D. L., Peltzer, K., & Mayer, B. (2005). The changing values of children and prefer-
ences regarding family size in South Africa. Applied Psychology: An International
Review, 54, 355–377.
Saroglou, V., Delpierre, V., & Dernelle, R. (2004). Values and religiosity: A meta-­analysis
of studies using Schwartz’s model. Personality and Individual Differences, 37,
721–734.
Schlegel, A. (2000). The global spread of adolescent culture. In L. Crockett & R. K.
Silbereisen (Eds.), Negotiating adolescence in times of social change (pp. 71–88).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schwartz, S. H., & Huismans, S. (1995). Value priorities and religiosity in four Western
religions. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58, 88–107.
Schwarz, B., Chakkarath, P., Trommsdorff, G., Schwenk, O., & Nauck, B. (2001). Report
on selected instruments of the Value of Children main study. Unpublished manu-
script. University of Konstanz, Germany.
Seginer, R. (2009). Future orientation: Developmental and ecological perspectives. New
York: Springer.
Sinha, D. (1991). Rise in the population of the elderly, familial changes and their psycho-
social implications: The scenario of the developing countries. International Journal
of Psychology, 26, 633–647.
Steger, M. F., & Frazier, P. (2005). Meaning in life: One link in the chain from religious-
ness to well-being. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52, 574–582.
Stetsenko, A. (2002). Adolescents in Russia: Surviving the turmoil and creating a brighter
future. In B. B. Brown, D. B. Larson, & T. S. Saraswathi (Eds.), The world’s youth:
Adolescence in eight regions of the globe (pp. 243–275). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Tarakeshwar, N., Stanton, J., & Pargament, K. I. (2003). Religion  – An overlooked
dimension in cross-cultural psychology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34,
377–394.
Thornton, A. (2005). Reading history sideways. The fallacy and enduring impact of the
developmental paradigm on family life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Trommsdorff, G. (2009a). Intergenerational relations and cultural transmission. In
U. Schönpflug (Ed.), Cultural transmission: Psychological, developmental, social,
and methodological aspects (pp. 126–160). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
  (2009b). A social change and a human development perspective on the value of chil-
dren. In S. Bekman & A. Aksu-Koc (Eds.), Perspectives on human development,
family and culture (pp. 86–107). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  (2012). Development of “agentic” regulation in cultural context: The role of self and
world views. Child Development Perspectives, 6, 19–26.
Trommsdorff, G., & Nauck, B. (Eds.). (2005). The value of children in cross-cultural per-
spective: Case studies from eight societies. Lengerich: Pabst Science.
Cross-Cultural Perspectives 369

United Nations Development Programme (2010). Human Development Report 2010–


20th anniversary edition. The real wealth of nations: Pathways to human develop-
ment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
van de Vijver, F. J. R., van Hemert, D. A., & Poortinga, Y. H. (2008). Conceptual issues
in multilevel models. In F. J. R. van de Vijver, D. A. van Hemert, & Y. H. Poortinga
(Eds.), Multilevel analysis of individuals and cultures (pp. 3–26). New York:
Erlbaum.
Wagener, L. M., Furrow, J. L., King, P. E., Leffert, N., & Benson, P. (2003). Religious
involvement and developmental resources in youth. Review of Religious Research,
44, 271–284.
Yang, K. S. (1996). The psychological transformation of the Chinese people as a result of
societal modernization. In M. H. Bond (Ed.), Handbook of Chinese psychology (pp.
479–498). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
Youniss, J., McLellan, J. A., & Yates, M. (1999). Religion, community service, and iden-
tity in American youth. Journal of Adolescence, 22, 243–253.
Youniss, J., & Smollar, J. (1985). Adolescent relations with mothers, fathers, and friends.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
16 Religion and the Intergenerational
Continuity of Values

Ariel Knafo, Ella Daniel, Sigal Gabay,


Ran Zilber, and Rivka Shir

Abstract
Adolescence is an important period for the development of values and
­identity. As relationships with parents are negotiated and convictions are
questioned, it is an especially intriguing time to study the interface of religion
with processes leading to the intergenerational continuity of values. Religion
can provide the content of values, as well as the context of intergenerational
value continuity, by developing appropriate establishments, and by enabling
(or not) disengagement from parental values. In addition, individuals’ religi-
osity is reflected in their values and in family processes of value negotiation,
influence, and modification.
Two Israeli case studies illustrate these processes. Study 1 studied 107 par-
ent–adolescent dyads from three religious minorities in Israel: Muslim Arabs,
Christian Arabs, and Jerusalem Armenian Christians. Muslims ascribed less
importance than Christians to hedonism and power, exemplifying the con-
tent process. Armenians, a very small and secluded minority, were the only
group in which adolescents ascribed lower importance for openness than
their parents, exemplifying the role of context with a cocooning process, in
which socialization shields children from competing messages (Goodnow,
1997).
Study 2 involved 36 non-religious Jewish youth whose parents were either
religious or not. The average value profile parent–child correlation was .50 in
non-religious families, much higher than in families who had been religious
but decided to become non-religious (.18), exemplifying the importance of
religion.
Future directions include the need for studying non-Western religions
and family processes in religious as compared to ethnic minorities.

370
Intergenerational Continuity of Values 371

For thousands of years, religion has provided the human species with a
sense of meaning. All major religions have a say about the way individu-
als and groups should behave, and sometimes even think and feel. In that
sense, religions are involved in prescribing the values of individuals and
groups (Fontaine, Duriez, Luyten, Corveleyn, & Hutsebaut, 2005; Pepper,
Uzzell, & Jackson, 2010, Roccas, 2005; Saroglou, Delpierre, & Dernelle,
2004). Values are abstract, transsituational goals serving as guides for
behavior and evaluation of other individuals and the self (Schwartz,
1992). Across many cultural and religious groups, 10 values are typically
found:

Benevolence: caring for others who are closely related to the self
Universalism: understanding, appreciation, and protection for all people
and of nature
Self-direction: independent thought and action
Stimulation: diversity, change, and excitement
Hedonism: pleasure and sensual satisfaction
Achievement: personal success through competence according to social
standards
Power: social status, control, and dominance
Security: safety, harmony, and stability of the social structure and of the
self
Conformity: limiting violation of social expectations and norms
Tradition: respect, commitment, and acceptance of the costumes and
ideas imposed by one’s culture or religion

See Schwartz (Chapter 4 in this volume), for a description of the values


theory.
A key factor in the transmission of cultural ideas from one generation
to the other is the family context. Parents are often expected to “transmit”
their values to their children. The processes in which values are negoti-
ated, transmitted, and modified across generations often occur in the con-
text of specific religions and religious practices and establishments. Going
beyond the family level, religions and religious institutions have a stated
goal – to influence the individuals affiliated with the religious group. Here
we describe some of the processes in which religion impacts the intergener-
ational continuity of values, and we exemplify them with data from parents
and their children.
372 Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, and Shir

Cultural level
H Religious
Religion
Contexts
E F
G
D L
Individual level

Parent’s Perceived
Child’s
values B parent C values
values

J K
A
Parent Child
religiosity religiosity
I

Figure 16.1.  A schematic representation of the role of religion and religiosity in


­intergenerational value continuity.

Intergenerational Continuity of Values


The family is an open system in which parents and children influence each
other with input from the environment influencing family members (e.g.,
Whitchurch & Constantine, 1993). The impact of each member is a func-
tion of the larger network of family relationships, and of the contexts within
which the family is nested (Hinde, 1989; O’Connor, et al., 1997). For exam-
ple, parents’ influence varies depending on the family’s ecological context
(e.g., culture or neighborhood) (Bronfenbrenner, 1986). Thus, Figure 16.1
distinguishes between cultural level factors and individual/family level
factors.
Figure 16.1 schematically presents the values of the parent–child dyad
as interrelating within a family system; the family exists within a broader
cultural context that may include the community, the religious denomina-
tion, and the religion with which families are affiliated. In addition to these
cultural-level factors, parents and children appear as individuals, each with
his or her own values as well as religiosity levels. This schematic representa-
tion of a very complex process leading to intergenerational (dis)continuity
in values shows several broad processes that exemplify the role of religion
and religiosity.
Grusec and Goodnow (1994) suggested that parent–child value continu-
ity results from a two-step process of internalization. In the first step (per-
ception), children perceive parents’ values with varying degrees of accuracy
(Knafo & Schwartz, 2003). In the second step (acceptance), children choose
to what extent to accept or reject the values they perceive. To the extent that
Intergenerational Continuity of Values 373

children perceive accurately and accept their parents’ values, parent–child


value congruence should be high (e.g., Barni, Ranieri, Scabini, & Rosnati,
2011; Okagaki & Bevis, 1999). Figure 16.1 includes the values children per-
ceive their parents to hold as mediating links between parents’ actual values
and children’s own values (Paths B and C).
Knafo and Schwartz (2008) showed that the combination of high accu-
racy of perception of parental values and high acceptance of these perceived
values is associated with the highest degree of parent–adolescent value con-
gruence. Interestingly, tradition, the value most strongly associated with
religiosity (Saroglou et al., 2004), showed the highest accuracy, acceptance
and congruence, of the 10 Schwartz (1992) values (Knafo & Schwartz, 2008).
This is congruent with other findings of higher parent–child congruence in
values and attitudes related to religiosity (Acock & Bengtson, 1978; Cavalli-
Sforza, Feldman, Chen, & Dornbusch, 1982; Troll & Bengtson, 1979).
It is important to note that not all parent–child congruence is accounted
for by the two steps (Path A). This is true for also for tradition values, which
were the ones most strongly predicted by demographic variables, as both
accuracy of perception and acceptance were higher for values that were pre-
dictable by parents’ socio-demographic characteristics (Knafo & Schwartz,
2008). Because parents and children share in part the same background, the
values and cultural practices of the social context in which these families
operate may cause part of similarity between parents and children (Roest,
Dubas, Gerris, & Engels, 2009), regardless of the intra-familial socialization
processes.
Another factor that may account for parent–child congruence beyond
socialization processes is shared genetic heritage (Knafo & Spinath, 2011).
Genetic influence has been shown for religion-related values and behaviors
(e.g., Waller, Kojetin, Bouchard, Lykken, & Tellegen, 1990), with evidence
for increase in heritability from adolescence to adulthood (Koenig, McGue,
Krueger, & Bouchard, 2005). To the extent that parents and children share
their genetic heritage and that values are heritable, parent–child value
congruence can reflect the shared genetic relatedness rather than direct
transmission from parent to child. Nevertheless, there is evidence for the
importance of accurate perception and acceptance for at least some of the
congruence between parents and children; it is therefore important to con-
sider these processes when studying the continuity of values in the family.

The Role of Religion


Religion and religiosity may be meaningful to intergenerational value
continuity for several reasons. First, religion can provide the content of
374 Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, and Shir

values. Second, individuals’ religiosity is reflected in their values and pos-


sibly in how parents and children behave to each other. Third, religion
provides the context of intergenerational value continuity, by developing
appropriate establishments, and by enabling (or not) disengagement from
parental values. Following a review of the literature discussing each of
these processes, we use two case studies from four religious groups in
Israel to illustrate the roles of religion and religiosity in intergenerational
value continuity.

Content.  First, religion can provide the content of values that are carried on
from one generation to the next, as indicated by value differences between
religions. These could reflect either the different teachings of the religions,
or the practices and traditions associated with each religion. Theorizing by
Weber, Huntington, and others (see Inglehart & Baker, 2000) suggests that
the religious tradition of a society has a long-term impact on the values of the
individuals within the society. A telling case concerns the differences across
European countries, which largely share a Christian heritage. Looking at the
value dimension of survival versus self-expression, predominantly Protestant
countries show high importance to self-expression, while Orthodox coun-
tries show higher importance to survival. Catholic (European and Latin
American) countries rank in the middle of the dimension (Inglehart & Baker,
2000). However, as Inglehart and Baker (2000) note, a society’s culture reflects
additional aspects of its historical and economic heritage. Going back to the
European example, the religious distinctions parallel a wide range of other
variables, such as economic development, the influence of different European
superpowers at different times, and perhaps even linguistic differences.
Another complication is that the same religion can have different mean-
ings in different cultural contexts (e.g. Catholicism in the Philippines and in
Italy). It would also be telling to compare different religious groups nested
within the same geographical and political context. Although we are not
aware of systematic evidence comparing different religions within the same
sociopolitical niche, there is some evidence that members of different reli-
gions differ in their values. For example, differences were found in the values
of individuals believing in two different religions (Buddhist and Christian)
within the same cultural environment (Saroglou & Dupuis, 2006). In con-
trast, Inglehart and Baker (2000) found that different religions within the
same country show smaller differences than those found in cross-national
comparisons.
As individual parents and children are typically nested within the same
cultural context, the religion they are affiliated with may exert influence
Intergenerational Continuity of Values 375

on both of them (Paths D and E in Figure 16.1). The implication is that by


virtue of belonging to the same religious group, parents and children share
some of their values, and the parent–child value similarity (Path A) may
reflect in part their shared religious belonging. To test the content process,
we studied adolescents and their parents with both Christian and Muslim
backgrounds, within the same (Israeli) sociopolitical context (Study 1).
Religiosity, the degree of personal ascription to religion, is reflected in
the values of individuals and in the processes in which values are negoti-
ated in the family. It should be noted that across several religious groups,
religiosity has been found to relate consistently to the importance of sev-
eral values. Specifically, religiosity is associated positively with values
reflecting conservation (such as tradition and conformity) and benevo-
lence (focusing on the welfare of others close to the individual) as well
as associated negatively with values indicating openness to change and
self-enhancement (self-direction, hedonism, stimulation, and less sys-
tematically, power and achievement) (Saroglou, et al., 2004; Schwartz &
Huismans, 1995). Most of these findings were replicated in a study with
Muslim participants (Kusdil & Kagitcibasi, 2000 in Saroglou & Galand,
2004). Recently, Schwartz (Chapter 4 in this volume) extended the find-
ings to adolescents. With data from 30 countries he found that even for
adolescents, religiosity relates most positively to tradition values and most
negatively to hedonism values.
The implication of the relationship between values and religiosity to
the issue of intergenerational continuity is that some of the parent–child
similarity in values may reflect commonality in religiosity between family
members. As parents’ religiosity is associated with their values (Path J), so
is the case for children (Path K). Because these relationships are similar for
adults and adolescents (Saroglou, et al., 2004; Schwartz, Chapter 4 in this
volume), and because parents’ religiosity correlates positively with that of
their children (Path I) (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1982; Troll & Bengtson, 1979),
similarity in values is likely to be associated with parent–child similarity in
religiosity.
To exemplify this point, we draw on data from 352 father–adolescent
and 519 mother–adolescent dyads (Knafo & Schwartz, 2008). These family
members were all Israeli Jews, with varied levels of religiosity (Knafo, 2003).
Adolescents’ religiosity correlated highly with that of fathers and mothers
(respectively, r=.63, r=.62, both p < .001). Nevertheless, there were inter-
generational differences, with parents slightly more religious than adoles-
cents (fathers, t(351) = 5.94. p <.001, D = 0.27; mothers, t(518) = 7.34. p
<.001, D = 0.28).
376 Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, and Shir

More interestingly, there were individual differences, with some families


showing higher and other families showing lower parent–adolescent differ-
ences in religiosity. Figure 16.2 shows that in parent–adolescent dyads in
which religiosity similarity was high, adolescents were more accurate in how
they perceived their parents’ values, and were more likely to accept the val-
ues of the mother, as compared to dyads showing low similarity in religi-
osity. As would be expected by the two-step process (Grusec & Goodnow,
1994; Knafo & Schwartz, 2008), this higher accuracy and acceptance was
manifest also in higher similarity of adolescents’ values to their parents’ val-
ues (Figure 16.2).
It is difficult to establish the direction of causality accounting for the
values–religiosity relationship. It is possible that some values promote the
adoption of religion to a larger extent. Another possibility is that being
highly religious (or not) promotes the adoption of a certain set of values.
Schwartz (Chapter 4 in this volume) suggests that the similarity of the pat-
tern of correlations between values and religiosity across different religions
is indicative more of a value-based choice for level of religiosity than of a
process in which all religions socialize to the same values. In most likeli-
hood, the relationship may involve a complex cycle of influence, in which
being involved in religious practice and the development of faith may con-
tribute to change in values, and vice versa.
Research has pointed out several pathways through which parental fac-
tors contribute, directly or indirectly, to the continuity of religion in the
family. Although this is beyond the scope of this paper, aspects of the fam-
ily structure, such as living with two biological parents, predict religious
behavior in the offspring generation (Desmond, Morgan & Kikuchi, 2010).
Factors like parental religiosity behavior, parental desire for children to be
religious, and dyadic discussion of faith all relate to religious intergenera-
tional continuity (Flor & Knapp, 2001). Moreover, parental generative con-
cern (Erikson 1968) is related to offspring’s absence of religious repudiation
(Peterson, 2006), and offspring’s religiousness during early, middle, and late
adulthood (Dillon, Wink, & Fay, 2003).
Religiosity is also relevant to parenting style, although the evidence is
not always consistent and may depend on the religion involved (Duriez,
Soenens, Neyrinck, & Vansteenkiste, 2009; Knafo & Schwartz, 2004;
Mahoney, Pargament, Tarakeshwar, & Swank, 2001). Thus, religiosity may
have a role in the intergenerational continuity of values through affecting the
parenting behavior toward children and adolescents and through it the fam-
ily processes of value negotiation, influence, and modification. For exam-
ple, research on parents’ responses to their children’s values suggests that
Adolescents’ acceptance of their Adolescents’ perception of their
mother’s values mother’s values

0.43 0.45
0.38
0.35 0.36
0.29

high some low high some low


similarity similarity similarity similarity similarity similarity

F(2,515)=4.61, p<0.01 F(2,515)=4.19, p<0.05

Adolescents’ congruence with Adolescents’ acceptance of


their mother’s values their father’s values

0.43
0.48 0.47
0.36
0.31
0.35

high some low high some low


similarity similarity similarity similarity similarity similarity

F(2,516)=5.5, p<0.01 F(2,349)=2.55, p<0.1

Adolescents’ perception of Adolescents’ congruence with


their father’s values their mother’s values
0.47
0.41 0.48 0.47

0.32
0.35

high some low high some low


similarity similarity similarity similarity similarity similarity

F(2,348)=4.24, p<0.05 F(2,348)=6.95, p<0.001

Figure 16.2.  Mean level of adolescents’ accuracy of perception, acceptance, and con-
gruence with parents’ values by parent–adolescent similarity in subjective religiosity.
Note: Based on a study of Israeli Jewish families (described in detail by Knafo, 2003).
Parents and adolescents (57 percent female, mean age = 17.1) rated their subjective reli-
giosity on a 0–6 scale (“How religious, if at all, do you consider yourself to be?” 0= “not at
all religious,” 6=“very religious;” Schwartz & Huismans, 1995). Parent–adolescent dyads
were classified as showing high similarity in religiosity if the absolute difference in their
religiosity scores was 0 or 1 (64 percent), showing moderate similarity if it was 2 (20 per-
cent), and showing low similarity if the difference was 3 or higher (16 percent). Parent–
Child Value Congruence was assessed by computing a within-dyad Pearson correlation
between parents’ socialization value ratings and their own child’s value ratings across the
value system. Accuracy of perception was measured by correlating parents’ socialization
value ratings with their own child’s rating of the values he or she perceived them as want-
ing him/her to endorse. Acceptance was measured by correlating the child’s own values
with the values the child perceived his or her parents wanting for him or her.
378 Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, and Shir

parents who were higher in self-reported religiosity tended to report that


values were more important to them, which, in turn, predicted their degree
of desired control over their children (Padilla-Walker & Thompson, 2005).

Context.  The values and cultural practices of the social context in which
families operate affect the processes leading to value continuity across gen-
erations. In addition, technical factors such as the availability of religiously
oriented schooling in the neighborhood (or even the absence of compet-
ing agents of socialization in the religious area), as suggested by Glass and
Bengtson (1986) may contribute to parents’ ability to influence the values
and attitudes of their children. We refer to this set of factors as “contexts,”
which can have an impact on family value continuity (Path L in Figure 16.1),
possibly through accuracy of perception and acceptance (Paths F and G).
Families are nested in a multitude of contexts (e.g., neighborhood, ethnic
group, religious group, social class), and it would be impossible to review all
of these contextual influences here; instead, we will discuss some key issues
and provide some examples that will be detailed in Study 1. Particularly,
one should consider how such contexts can constrain the breadth of values
to which family members are exposed and can choose from, the degree to
which cultures allow for child influence, and the degree to which embed-
ding religion into the identity of group members affects family members’
values.
Cultures (Arnett, 1995) and individual parents (Padilla-Walker &
Thompson, 2005) differ in the importance they ascribe to continuity in
values across generations. Homogenous cultures tend to transmit specific
values according to their original narrow set of values and tend to empha-
size conformity and obedience (Arnett, 1995; Welch, 1984). One way this
is achieved is through providing family members with daily routines, reli-
gious ceremonies, and cultural practices. These habitual patterns facilitate
the acceptance of certain values by making associated behaviors appear
so “natural” they require no explanation or justification (Goodnow, 1997;
Grusec, et al., 2000).
Religious establishments, such as schools, churches, and charities, are
often built to promote the continuation of certain values across generations.
When choosing to send their children to a religious school, parents, in a
way, rely on these establishments to promote the values they believe in. In
contrast, sometimes parents choose environments for their children that are
inconsistent with their own values (Kuczynski, et al., 1997). For example,
Muslim immigrant parents inevitably expose their children to value sys-
tems different from their own by moving to a historically Christian country.
Intergenerational Continuity of Values 379

In such cases, parents may find themselves in a need to protect the values
in the face of conflicting value messages. A study of Jewish families in Israel
looked at another source of conflicting messages. Knafo (2003) focused on
a small proportion of parents who sent their children to schools that had a
different religious ideology than that prevalent in the family (e.g., non-reli-
gious parents and a religious school). In such low-fit families, adolescents’
accurate perception, acceptance of parental values, and congruence with
parents’ values, tended to be lower than in high-fit families. The relation-
ship with the father was warmer and closer in high-fit contexts, and per-
ceived value conflicts with both parents were less frequent (Knafo, 2003).
Some cultures may prevent children from exposure to competing value
messages, a strategy called cocooning (Goodnow, 1997). Such processes may
enhance the continuity of values in the family as parents and children are
exposed to similar value messages. Thus, a limited set of options may reduce
the need to accurately perceive parents’ values and enhance acceptance
of the perceived values by virtue of having a lower number of conflicting
messages. In one study, parents who preferred cocooning over pre-arming
(anticipatory preparation of adolescents with counter-arguments and other
ways of dealing with conflicting values in their encounters with the broader
world; Goodnow, 1997), tended to be more religious than other parents
(see Padilla-Walker & Thompson, 2005). Applied to the group level, some
secluded religious contexts such as the Amish communities may perpet-
uate selected values from one generation to the next through cocooning.
For example, television, most newspapers, and most of the Internet web-
sites are banned by ultra-Orthodox Jews. In Study 1, we examine the pos-
sibility of cocooning in a highly secluded ethnic group, namely Jerusalem
Armenians.

Intergenerational Value Continuity in Three Religious


Minorities in Israel: Study 1
Our first case study looked at intergenerational value continuities in dyads
of adolescent (aged 13–18, M=15.97, SD=1.34) and parents in three reli-
gious minorities in Israel: Muslim Arabs (N=63), Christian Arabs (N=24),
and Jerusalem Armenian Christians (N=20). These three groups have par-
tially overlapping but sometimes dramatically different ethnic, historical,
and religious backgrounds. Our purpose is to demonstrate the role of dif-
ferent religious affiliations in adolescents’ and their parents’ values.
The two Arab groups (recruited as part of a larger study, Knafo, Daniel,
& Khoury-Kassabri, 2008) include Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. This
380 Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, and Shir

minority group, forming 20.2 percent of the Israeli population, lives mostly
in homogenous Arab villages or in their own neighborhoods in mixed cit-
ies, such as Jerusalem (Rabinowitz, 2001).
The Armenian community includes 2,000 members living in the Old
City of Jerusalem. The Armenian heritage emphasizes the devotion to the
family (Phinney, Ong, & Madden, 2000). This and their historical back-
ground (moving to a predominantly Arab part of the world from Armenia)
might underlie their specific identity, which is based on nation, church, and
family (O’Grady, 1981). Although this community maintains relationships
with the larger ethnic communities of Jews and Arabs in Israel, it lives in
a segregated society (e.g., the Armenian Quarter within the Old City walls
is surrounded by a second wall.) Importantly, the size and seclusion of this
cultural group are reflected in the fact that parents typically send their chil-
dren to a single school, limited only to children of this group and run by
church personnel.
We conducted a two-way ANOVA (two generations x three religious
groups) for each of the 10 values, measured with the Portrait Values
Questionnaire (PVQ; Schwartz & Rubel, 2005), and computed as residual
scores controlling for adolescent age and the gender of the parent and the
adolescent.1
Generation effects are not central to this investigation, but worth men-
tioning nevertheless. Parents gave higher importance to the conservation
values of security and tradition, and lower importance to stimulation, as
would be expected from past research (e.g., Knafo & Schwartz, 2001). In
addition, they showed higher importance to universalism values than ado-
lescents did.
Religious group differences were also found, as Muslims were lower than
Christians in hedonism, power, and security, and gave higher importance
to self-direction values in comparison to their Christian counterparts.
Taken together, the religious differences provide support for the content
process, in which different religions provide group members with different
values.

Intergenerational Differences Contingent on Religious Group.  Three


significant interactions (Figure 16.3) emerged between generations and
religious groups. These were found in three values of openness to change:
self-direction, stimulation, and hedonism. The pattern of generational
differences in the two Arab groups was similar across values, as adolescents
gave higher importance than parents to openness (Knafo & Schwartz,
2001). A very different finding was found in Armenian families, in which
Intergenerational Continuity of Values 381

Christian Armenian Christian Arab

Muslim Arab

4.6
4.4
Self-direction

4.2
4
3.8
3.6
3.4

Adolescent Parent
(a)

Christian Armenian Christian Arab

Muslim Arab

4.2
4
Stimulation

3.8
3.6
3.4
3.2
3

Adolescent Parent
(b)

Christian Armenian Christian Arab

Muslim Arab

4.6
4.4
4.2
Hedonism

4
3.8
3.6
3.4

Adolescent Parent
(c)

Figure 16.3.  Interactions between generation and religious group in the importance of
openness to change values (Study 1) (a) self-direction; (b) stimulation; (c) Hedonism.

adolescents ascribed lower importance than their parents (in stimulation,


similar importance), to openness. The result is consistent with Armenian
obligations to nation, church, and family (O’Grady, 1981; Phinney et al.,
2000). The unique results in this very small and highly secluded minority
382 Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, and Shir

may be interpreted as evidence for a cocooning process (Goodnow, 1997)


as socialization promotes children’s adoption of relatively conservative
values.
In sum, the results of Study 1 exemplify the context process, in which
religious establishments affect the formation of values and parents’ ability
to transmit their values from one generation to the next.

Value Continuity Processes when Adolescents Reject their


Parents’ Religiosity: Study 2
Earlier we presented data showing that similarity in religiosity levels was
associated with higher accuracy of perception, acceptance, and congruence
between the values of parents and adolescents. Differences in religiosity
imply a move away from parents’ affiliation to a different stance on reli-
giosity. This secondary analysis did not directly investigate the direction
of change in religiosity (e.g., a religious parent could have a non-religious
child if either the parent became more religious or the child left the reli-
gion). We are not aware of a previous study that directly addressed value
continuity processes in families in which adolescents openly rejected their
parents’ religiosity.
Our second case study, therefore, compared two groups of parent–
youth dyads. Youth could come either from religious or non-religious
families, but were all self-defined non-religious Israeli Jews. Our first
goal was to examine parent–youth value similarity, comparing non-reli-
gious families with those of religion leavers. On the one hand, one could
expect to see some parent–youth value similarity in both groups, owing
to shared genetic heritage and socialization influences. On the other
hand, religion leavers may come to adopt values negatively related to
religiosity (e.g., hedonism), and reduce the importance of values such as
tradition. By leaving religion, youth are making a strong value-relevant
decision, possibly rejecting some or much of their parents’ values. We
therefore expected lower value congruence in parent–child dyads of reli-
gion leavers.
The second goal of Study 2 was to address the specific value characteris-
tic of religion leavers. Religion leavers can distance themselves from their
religious heritage either because of theoretical/moral reasons (e.g., not
believing in humans’ subjection to a supreme, divine force) or by reject-
ing the regulations and behavioral prescriptions of religion, which, in
most Western religions, limit individuals’ ability to pursue many bodily or
Intergenerational Continuity of Values 383

sensual desires. The first process will entail mainly a rejection of conformity
values (and possibly a strong belief in self-direction) because these values
prescribe preservation of the status quo, acceptance of a higher authority
over one’s life, and subjection to social norms. The second process would
mean an especially high preference for hedonism (possibly also stimula-
tion) values.
Participants were 36 non-religious Jewish Israeli university students
(39 percent male, Mean age=26.06, SD=2.06) and one of their parents.
Seventeen dyads included a religious parent and a non-religious child,
while the other group consisted of 19 dyads of predominantly non-religious
youth and their parents. We compared the parent–child correlation value
profile across the 10 Schwartz values (Rohan & Zanna, 1996) in the two
groups. Whereas the average correlation was .50 in non-religious families
(SD=.31), in families of religion leavers it was .18 (SD=.30), t(df=34) = 3.19,
p <.01. Thus, religion leaving involves a large (D=1.09) difference in parent–
child value congruence, exemplifying the importance of religion in family
value continuity, and the religiosity process (Figure 16.1).

Intergenerational Differences Contingent on Religiosity Status.  As in


Study 1, we ran for each value a two-way ANOVA (two generations x two
religious groups); main results are available upon request. In this chapter,
we focus on the interaction results. Four significant interactions were found
between generation and religiosity status in the importance of values. First,
as would be expected, religious parents were much higher than either their
non-religious offspring or the parents and youth in the non-religious group
in tradition values (the content process). Second, a weaker difference was
found in benevolence values, for which youth who came from non-religious
families showed slightly higher importance than other study participants.
Two interaction effects (Figure 16.4) are particularly worth mentioning.
As noted above, hedonism is usually negatively associated with religiosity.
However, although both groups of youth were non-religious, hedonism was
especially high among religion leavers as compared to their religious par-
ents, more than the parallel difference for non-religious parents. Possibly,
leaving religion is motivated by high hedonism (rejecting the constraints
and regulations associated with religion). Second, conformity values were
especially low among religion leavers, perhaps reflecting low importance to
the norms and rules associated with religion. Possibly, low conformity may
provide a motivational impetus to breaking social constraints, such as the
one needed for leaving religion.
384 Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, and Shir

Religion leavers Non-religious


4.2
4
3.8
Conformity

3.6
3.4
3.2
3
Youth Parent
(a)

Religion leavers Non-religious


4.2
4
Hedonism

3.8
3.6
3.4
3.2
3
Youth Parent
(b)
Figure 16.4.  Interactions between generation and religiosity group in the importance of
conformity and hedonism values (Study 2) (a) Conformity; (b) Hedonism.

Interestingly, computing the value profile parent–child correlation with-


out conformity and hedonism still showed higher similarity across the
eight remaining values in non-religious families (M= .55, SD =.31) than in
families of religion leavers (M=.24, SD=.33, t[df=34] = 2.96, p <.01). Thus,
conformity and hedonism cannot fully account for the reduction in parent–
child congruence among religion leavers.
The unique results in religion leavers suggest several intriguing pos-
sibilities. First, we found support for the possibility that rejection of par-
ents’ religion is grounded in both the lack of importance to social norms
and the desire to engage in pleasurable activities not espoused by religion.
Intergenerational Continuity of Values 385

Second, religion leaving was associated with lower parent–child congru-


ence even for the other eight values, indicating a nonspecific distancing
from parental values. Third, despite the generally low parent–child value
congruence among religious leavers, they still shared their values to some
extent with their parents, as indicated in a positive value congruence
score, t(df=16) = 2.60, p <.02. Genetic relatedness between parents and
children, shared social environments, or perhaps a successful influence
process in values less relevant to religiosity may account for the remain-
ing similarity.

Conclusions
In a meta-analysis, every single one of Schwartz’s (1992) 10 values was asso-
ciated to some extent with within-culture religiosity differences (Saroglou
et al., 2004). In our Study 1, six of these values varied significantly across
religious groups. Thus, religion is not only relevant to how people behave,
but also to their values across many cultures. Religiosity relates to individ-
uals’ identity (Paryente & Orr, 2010) and to how individuals socialize their
children (Padilla-Walker & Thompson, 2005). Even in contexts in which
the political system was opposed to religion, religiosity (or the lack thereof)
played a role in individuals’ values (Roccas & Schwartz, 1997), and as our
Study 2 shows, religion is relevant even to the lives of people who decide
to leave it, as apparent from value differences between non-religious youth
and religion leavers.
Our analysis points to the importance of religion and religiosity to pro-
cesses of value influences in the family. The role of culture as the context
in which these influences take place has also been exemplified. The posi-
tion of cultures on the cultural dimensions of power-distance or hierarchy
(Hofstede, 1980; Schwartz, 1999) may affect, for instance, tolerance and
legitimacy for child influence. Similarly, accuracy of perception of the par-
ent’s value may be less relevant to the development of values in narrow-
socialization cultures (Arnett, 1995) in which the range of values is limited,
possibly enabling children to infer parents’ values from many sources other
than their own parents. The potential for competing value messages in a
culture is also important (Goodnow, 1997). For example, Cavalli-Sforza
(1993) described one African context with no schools and only few age
peers, where parental influence was the major cultural process. The cultural
context can operate through the societal establishments it uses for moni-
toring the values of future generations. We briefly mentioned two exam-
ples (religious and non-religious Jewish Israeli schools, and the secluded
386 Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, and Shir

Jerusalem Armenian school), but our findings call for the investigation of
additional contextual factors.
As we noted in the introduction to this chapter, one of the complications
in the study of religion is its overlap with other factors, in both the cultural
level and the individual level (Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Saroglou & Dupuis,
2006). This was the case in the current investigation, too. For example, the
two Arab groups differ not only in their religion, but also in their socioeco-
nomic background, as the Arab Christians tend to be more affluent than
the Muslims, and have substantially lower birth rates. We thus cannot fully
disentangle the effect of religion from that of other variables. Similarly, it is
difficult to generalize from the differences between Muslims and Christians
in this sociopolitical context to other contexts. Muslim-Christian differ-
ences are likely to depend on whether they are both ethnic political minor-
ities (the Israeli case), whether one religious group is dominant and affluent
and the other is an immigrant minority (the Dutch case), or whether they
are two historically neighboring groups competing for dominance within
the same political entity (the Lebanese case, Shiite and Sunni distinctions
notwithstanding).
The samples we reached were quite small, which is another limitation.
Larger samples with longitudinal designs will provide more power for
addressing complex patterns of influence and more validity to causal claims.
Nevertheless, the unique findings, especially with regard to the Armenian
families, show a promising direction for future research on the role of reli-
gion and ethnicity in family value continuity.
We view the set of findings merely as appetizers for future research.
Despite its complexity, Figure 16.1 only presents a simplified sche-
matic depiction of processes that are each complicated by the content of
values at hand and by the cultural, religious, and perhaps also political
context. For example, we focused our review of values on major world
religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The role of religion
in non-Western religions should be addressed. Are some religions more
tolerant of change and deviation from tradition, for example? Are there
religions whose teachings are less lined up with the conservation side of
the openness–conservation dimension? In Study 2 we showed the rich-
ness of family processes involving values and religion while focusing on
a single ethnic-religious group. A follow-up, hopefully using a longitu-
dinal design, of religion leavers in a multitude of comparable religions
and social contexts may not only teach us about religion leavers, but also
about religious experience itself.
Intergenerational Continuity of Values 387

Notes

1. The means, standard deviations, and the results of the ANOVAs are available from the
authors.

References

Acock, A. C., & Bengtson, V. L. (1978). On the relative importance of mothers and
fathers: A covariance analysis of political and religious socialization. Journal of
Marriage and the Family, 40, 519–530.
Arnett, J. J. (1995). Broad and narrow socialization: The family in the context of a cul-
tural theory. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57, 615–628.
Barni, D., Ranieri, S., Scabini, E., & Rosnati, R. (2011). Value transmission in the family:
Do adolescents accept the values their parents want to transmit? Journal of Moral
Education, 40, 105–121. doi: 10.1080/03057240.2011.553797
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1986). Ecology of the family as a context for human devel-
opment: Research perspectives. Developmental Psychology, 22, 723–742. doi:
10.1037/0012–1649.22.6.723
Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (1993). How are values transmitted? In M. Hechter, L. Nadel, & R. E.
Michod (Eds.), The origin of values (pp. 305–317). New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., Feldman, M.W., Chen, K. H., & Dornbusch, S. M. (1982). Theory
and observation cultural transmission. Science, 218(4567), 19–27. doi: 10.1126/
science.7123211.
Desmond, S. A., Morgan, K. H., & Kikuchi, G. (2010). Religious development: How (and
why) does religiosity change from adolescence to young adulthood? Sociological
Perspectives, 53, 247–270. doi: 10.1525/sop.2010.53.2.247
Dillon, M., Wink, P., & Fay, K. (2003). Is spirituality detrimental to generativity? Journal
for the Scientific Study of Religion, 42, 427–442. doi: 10.1111/1468–5906.00192
Duriez, B., Soenens, B., Neyrinck, B., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2009) Is religios-
ity related to better parenting?. Journal of Family Issues, 30, 1287–1307. doi:
10.1177/0192513X09334168
Ellison, C. G., & Sherkat, D. E. (1993). Obedience and autonomy: Religion and parental
values reconsidered. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 32, 313–329.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York: Norton.
Flor, D. L., & Knapp, N. F. (2001). Transmission and transaction: Predicting adoles-
cents’ internalization of parental religious values. Journal of Family Psychology, 15,
627–645. doi: 10.1037/0893–3200.15.4.627
Fontaine, J. R. J., Duriez, B., Luyten, P., Corveleyn, J., & Hutsebaut, D. (2005). Research:
“Consequences of a multidimensional approach to religion for the relationship
between religiosity and value priorities.” International Journal for the Psychology of
Religion, 15, 123–143. Doi: 10.1207/s15327582ijpr1502_2
Glass, J., Bengtson, V. L., & Dunham, C.C. (1986). Attitude similarity in three-genera-
tion families: Socialization, status inheritance, or reciprocal influence? American
Sociological Review, 51, 685–698.
Goodnow, J. J. (1997). Parenting and the “transmission” and “internalization” of val-
ues: From social-cultural perspectives to within-family analyses. In J. E. Grusec
388 Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, and Shir

& L. Kuczynski (Eds.), Handbook of parenting and the transmission of values (pp.
333–361). New York: Wiley.
Grusec, J. E., & Goodnow, J. J. (1994). Impact of parental discipline methods on the
child’s internalization of values: A reconceptualization of current points of view.
Developmental Psychology, 30, 4–19. doi: 10.1037/0012–1649.30.1.4 .
Grusec, J. E., Goodnow, J. J., & Kuczynski, L. (2000). New directions in analyses of par-
enting contributions to children’s acquisition of values. Child Development, 71,
205–211. doi: 10.1111/1467–8624.00135.
Hinde, R. (1989). Reconciling the family systems approach and the relationships
approach to child development. In K. Kreppner & R. Lerner (eds.), Family systems
and life-span development (pp. 149–163). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related
values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Inglehart, R., & Baker, W. E. (2000). Modernization, cultural change, and the persistence
of traditional values. American Sociological Review, 65, 19–51.
Knafo, A. (2003). Contexts, relationship quality, and family value socialization: The case
of parent-school ideological fit in Israel. Personal Relationships, 10, 373–390. doi:
10.1111/1475–6811.00055.
Knafo, A., Daniel, E., & Khoury-Kassabri, M. (2008).Values as protective factors against
violent behavior in Jewish and Arab high schools in Israel. Child Development, 79,
652–667. doi: 10.1111/j.1467–8624.2008.01149.x
Knafo, A., & Schwartz, S. H. (2001). Value socialization in families of Israeli-born and
Soviet-born adolescents in Israel. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32, 213–
228. doi: 10.1177/0022022101032002008
  (2003). Parenting and adolescents’ accuracy in perceiving parental values. Child
Development, 74, 595–611. doi: 10.1111/1467–8624.7402018
  (2004). Value transmission in the family: Effects of family background and implica-
tions for educational achievement. Jerusalem, IL: NCJW Research Institute for
Innovation in Education (Hebrew).
  (2008). Accounting for parent–child value congruence: Theoretical considerations and
empirical evidence. In U. Schönpflug (Ed.), Cultural transmission: Developmental,
psychological, social, and methodological perspectives (pp. 240–268). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Knafo, A., & Spinath, F. M. (2011). Genetic and environmental influences on girls’ and
boys’ gender-typed and gender-neutral values. Developmental Psychology, 47, 726–
731. doi: 10.1037/a0021910
Koenig, L. B., McGue, M., Krueger, R. F., & Bouchard, T. J. (2005). Genetic
and environmental influences on religiousness: Findings for retrospective
and current religiousness ratings. Journal of Personality, 73, 471–488. doi:
10.1111/j.1467–6494.2005.00316.x
Kuczynski, L., Marshall, S., & Schell, K. (1997). Value socialization in a bidirectional
context. In J. E. Grusec & L. Kuczynski (Eds.), Parenting and the internalization of
values: A handbook of contemporary theory (pp. 23–50). New York: Wiley.
Kusdil, M. E., & Kagitcibasi, C. (2000). Tuerk oegretmenlerin deger yoenelimleri ve
Schwartz deger kurami [Value orientations of Turkish teachers and Schwartz’s the-
ory of values]. In V. Saroglou and P. Galand (Eds.), Identities, values, and religion:
Intergenerational Continuity of Values 389

A study among Muslim, other immigrant, and native Belgian young adults after the
9/11 attacks. Identity, 4, 97–132. doi: 10.1207/s1532706xid0402_1
Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Tarakeshwar, N., & Swank, A. B. (2001). Religion in the
home in the 1980s and 1990s: A meta-analytic review and conceptual analysis of
links between religion, marriage, and parenting. Journal of Family Psychology, 15,
559–596. doi: 10.1037/1941–1022.S.1.63
Maio, G. R., & Olson, J. M. (1998). Values as truisms: Evidence and impli-
cations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 294–311. doi:
10.1037/0022–3514.74.2.294
O’Connor, T. G., Hetherington, E. M., & Clingempeel, W. G. (1997). Systems and bidi-
rectional influences in families. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 14,
491–504. doi: 10.1177/0265407597144005
O’Grady, I. P. (1981). Shared meaning and choice as components of Armenian immi-
grant adaptation. Anthropological Quarterly, 54, 76–81.
Okagaki, L., & Bevis, C. (1999). Transmission of religious values: Relations between
parents’ and daughters’ beliefs. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 160, 303–318. doi:
10.1080/00221329909595401
Padilla-Walker, L. M., & Thompson, R. A. (2005). Combating conflicting messages of
values: A closer look at parental strategies. Social Development, 14, 305–323. doi:
10.1111/j.1467–9507.2005.00303.x
Paryente, B., & Orr, E. (2010). Identity representations and intergenerational trans-
mission of values: The case of a religious minority in Israel. Papers on Social
Representations, 19, 1–36.
Pepper, M., Uzzell, D., Jackson, T. (2010). A study of multidimensional religion con-
structs and value in the United Kingdom. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
49, 127–146. doi: 10.1111/j.1468–5906.2009.01496.x
Peterson, B. E. (2006). Generativity and successful parenting: An analysis of young adult out-
comes. Journal of Personality, 74, 847–869. doi: 10.1111/j.1467–6494.2006.00394.x.
Phinney, J. S., Ong, A., & Madden, T. (2000). Cultural values and intergenerational value
discrepancies in immigrant and non-immigrant families. Child Development, 71,
528–539. doi: 10.1111/1467–8624.00162.
Rabinowitz, D. (2001). The Palestinian citizens of Israel, the concept of trapped minority
and the discourse of transnationalism in anthropology. Ethnic and Racial Studies,
24, 64–85. doi: 10.1080/014198701750052505
Roccas, S. (2005) Religion and value systems. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 747–759. doi:
10.1111/j.1540–4560.2005.00430.x.
Roccas, S., & Schwartz, S. H. (1997). Church-state relations and the association of religi-
osity with values: A study of Catholics in six countries. Cross-Cultural Research, 31,
356–375. doi: 10.1177/106939719703100404
Roest, A. M. C., Dubas, J. S., Gerris, J. R. M., & Engels, C. M. E. (2009). Value similari-
ties among fathers, mothers and adolescents and the role of a cultural stereotype:
Different measurement strategies reconsidered. Journal of Research on Adolescence,
19, 812–833. doi: 10.1111/j.1532–7795.2009.00621.x
Rohan, M. J., & Zanna, M. P. (1996). Value transmission in families. In C. Seligman, J. M.
Olson, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), The psychology of values: The Ontario Symposium, Vol.
8 (pp. 253–276). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
390 Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, and Shir

Saroglou, V., Delpierre, V., & Dernelle, R. (2004). Value and religiosity: A meta-­analysis
of studies using Schwartz’s model. Personality and Individual Differences, 37,
721–734.
Saroglou, V., & Dupuis, J. (2006). Being Buddhist in Western Europe: Cognitive needs,
prosocial character, and values. The International Journal for the Psychology of
Religion, 16, 163–179. doi: 10.1207/s15327582ijpr1603_2
Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical
advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social
Psychology, 25, 1–65.
  (1999). A theory of cultural values and some implications for work. Applied Psychology:
An International Review, 48, 23–47. doi: 10.1111/j.1464–0597.1999.tb00047.x
Schwartz, S. H., & Huismans, S. (1995). Value priorities and religiosity in four western
religions. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58, 88–107.
Schwartz, S. H., & Rubel, T. (2005). Sex differences in value priorities: Cross-cultural
and multi-method studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 1010–
1028. doi:10.1037/0022–3514.89.6.1010
Troll, L., & Bengtson, V. (1979). Generations and the family. In W. R. Burr, R. Hill,
F. I. Nye, & I. L. Reiss (Eds.), Contemporary theories about the family, Vol. 1 (pp.
127–161). New York: The Free Press.
Waller, N. G., Kojetin, B. A., Bouchard, T. J., Lykken, D. T., & Tellegen, A. (1990). Genetic
and environmental influences on religious interests, attitudes, and values: A study
of twins reared apart and together. Psychological Science, 1, 138–142.
Welch, M. R. (1984). Social structural expansion, economic diversification, and concen-
tration of emphases in childhood socialization. Ethos, 12, 363–382. doi: 10.1525/
eth.1984.12.4.02a00040
Whitchurch, G. G., & Constantine, L. I. (1993). System theory. In P. Boss (Ed.),
Sourcebook of family theory and methods (pp. 325–353). New York: Plenum Press.
17 Adolescents’ Social Development
and the Role of Religion
Coherence at the Detriment of Openness

Vassilis Saroglou

Abstract
Previous reviews of research conclude that, overall, adolescents’ religiosity
is linked with many positive individual and social outcomes. Only negative
forms of religion would imply negative outcomes. In the present chapter,
such a conclusion is importantly nuanced. I systematically review here pre-
vious studies and present new data on the relation between religiosity (major
forms of it) and key aspects of adolescents’ social development: personality,
values, identity status, and collective (ethnic and immigrants’ new) identi-
ties. Attention is paid to provide cross-cultural information, when available.
In addition, I present a new study integrating the cognitive, emotional, per-
sonality, and moral factors involved with religious doubting in adolescence.
Consistently across studies and domains of social development, the find-
ings are in favor of the “coherence at the detriment of openness” hypoth-
esis. Adolescent religion seems to reflect stability, conservation, engagement,
and cohesion, but potentially somehow at the detriment of plasticity, open-
ness, exploration, and autonomy – all important for optimal development.
Complementing others’ argument that adolescence is a “sensitive” period for
spiritual development, I argue that adolescence is also a “sensitive” period for
religious doubting and agnosticism.

What role does religion play in adolescents’ social development? More spe-
cifically, how does individual religiousness relate to or influence adolescents’
personality, values, personal and collective identities, and social relation-
ships? In recent years, several overviews of studies on the role of religion
and spirituality on child, adolescent, and youth development in general have
been published (for major overviews, see Lerner, Roeser, & Phelps, 2008;
Oser, Scarlett, & Bucher, 2006; Roehlkepartain, King, Wagener, & Benson,

391
392 Saroglou

2006; see also Boyatzis, 2009; Holden & Vittrup, 2010; King & Roeser, 2009;
Scarlett & Alberts, 2010; Warren, Lerner, & Phelps, 2011). The major con-
clusion consistently observed from these reviews is that, overall, religion/
spirituality has a positive impact on many aspects of adolescent and youth
development including meaning, identity, values, prosocial attitudes and
behavior, social responsibility, life goals, adjustment, coping with adversity,
emotion- and self-regulation, and healthy behaviors (low risk-taking and
impulsivity-related behaviors). A very recent meta-analysis of 40 studies
confirmed that the religious involvement of adolescents is positively associ-
ated with various constructive behaviors and negatively associated with var-
ious destructive behaviors (respective average effect sizes, Zs = .20 and -.17;
Cheung & Yeung, 2011). Although most of these reviews are, by the nature
of the existing literature, heavily based on cross-sectional and correlational
studies, when longitudinal studies are available, they tend to confirm the
trends in the findings (see, for instance, French, Eisenberg, Purwomo, &
Sallquist, Chapter 6 in this volume).
In the present chapter, the conclusion regarding the positive role of reli-
gion/spirituality in the life of adolescents will be nuanced and, in a way,
challenged. The argument that will be developed is that the positive out-
comes or correlates of religiousness in adolescents’ social development
are limited. They point to a sense of coherence and stability, but constitute
only part of the picture. In fact, adolescents’ religiousness does not seem to
reflect or contribute to the major trends of optimal development such as
openness, autonomy, critical thinking, flexibility, and pluralism.
To support this argument, I will review the empirical research on the role
religion plays with regard to four specific domains, each important for ado-
lescent social development: (1) personality (integrative framework of the
Five-Factor Model), (2) values (Schwartz’s 1992 circumplex model of val-
ues), (3) personal identity (Marcia’s 1980 model of identity statuses), and (4)
collective identities (ethnic and transnational identities, and, for immigrant
adolescents, origin and new identities). This review will be importantly, but
not exclusively, based on studies (primary studies and meta-analyses) car-
ried out in recent years in our laboratory. The review of domains (1) and (2)
will be partly based on existing meta-analyses (Saroglou, 2010; Saroglou,
Delpierre, & Dermelle, 2004), but new data will also be presented (e.g., from
the European Social Survey and a study on children’s values and religion).
The review of domains (3) and (4) is totally new. Moreover, a new study
will be presented that explores an additional domain, that is (5) religious
doubt and the way it can be understood with respect to optimal adolescent
Adolescents’ Social Development 393

development. Finally, in the conclusion, the major findings and the global
argument from this review chapter will allow us to revisit the issue of pos-
itive versus negative effects of religion in adolescent social development.
Suggestions for directions of future research will also be made.

Religion, Spirituality, and Universal Existential and


Moral Issues: Clarifications
Before examining the main issues of the present chapter, it is important to
define and clarify the constructs of religion and spirituality and their con-
nection with, and distinction from, the universal human tendencies to deal
with existential and moral issues.
There exists today some consensus among researchers that religion
(or religiosity) and spirituality are overlapping but distinct constructs
(Zinnbauer & Pargament, 2005; see also Flanagan, & Jupp, 2007). Empirical
research has shown that religiosity and spirituality, despite several com-
monalities, differ in many psychological characteristics, predictors, and
outcomes (Saroglou & Muñoz-García, 2008; Saucier & Skrzypińska, 2006).
Religiosity is individuals’ reference to (what they consider to be a) tran-
scendence through beliefs, rituals, moral norms, and/or community, some-
how regulated by an institutionalized authority. Spirituality is individuals’
reference to (what they consider to be a) transcendence through personal
beliefs, experiences, and/or moral attitudes that may be independent from
any authority or organized group (Saroglou, 2011). However, within the
context of organized religions, spirituality has been considered a part of
religion (in addition to other aspects such as theology, rituals, and ethics).
This is why the two constructs are still treated sometimes as interchange-
able. Nevertheless, for the sake of scientific rigor and clarity of communica-
tion, it is important to keep the distinction between (traditional) religiosity
and (modern) spirituality, at least when referring to modern societies that
encourage sacred experiences that are autonomous from religious institu-
tions. Indeed, although many people define themselves as “religious and
spiritual,” an increasing part of Western populations define themselves as
“spiritual, not religious.”
In the present chapter, the emphasis will be on the roles of religion and
religiosity rather than on the role of (new forms of) spirituality in adoles-
cent development. This is for two reasons. First, in the domain of adolescent
development, most research has been carried out in religious contexts, on
adolescents who have most often received religious socialization in their
394 Saroglou

family or community in connection with some kind of religious institution


and tradition. “Spiritual but not religious” adolescents constitute an emerg-
ing reality that will very likely be increasingly present. Studies on the role
of (nonreligious) spirituality among these adolescents will soon constitute
an important body of research to be reviewed. Second, and in line with
the first, using the two terms as interchangeable or using a combined term
such as “religion/spirituality” may lead to erroneous conclusions. It could,
for instance, be suspected that some of the many positive effects of reli-
gion on adolescent development concluded by various studies and reviews
previously cited may have been overestimated: spirituality’s effects are over-
all more positive than those of religiosity, and thus “religion” may benefit
undeservedly from being combined with “spirituality.”
Finally, it is of interest to clarify another distinction. Religiosity and spir-
ituality imply, but are not equivalent to, dealing with existential and moral
issues and looking for self-transcendence. The latter are universal human
dimensions, whereas being religious or spiritual is less universal. Indeed,
religiosity and spirituality imply specific ways of dealing with universal
existential and moral issues (e.g., affirmation that one’s own life and the
world are meaningful; emphasis on specific moral standards and norms;
believing in an external, personal or impersonal, transcendence) (Saroglou,
2011). Other people, nonreligious and/or non-spiritual, may deny one or all
of the above. The non-distinction between these constructs may contami-
nate results and inflate the positive effects of religion and spirituality. If, for
instance, one conceptualizes and measures spirituality as including com-
passion for all beings, no doubt positive associations will be found between
this construct and prosocial attitudes, values, emotions, and behavior.

Personality and Religiousness: Stability but not


(Necessarily) Plasticity
High versus low interest and investment in religious attitudes, beliefs, and
practices has traditionally been suspected to reflect, among other factors,
individual differences in personality dispositions and traits. Using the
terminology of the dominant model of the five basic personality factors,
Saroglou and Muñoz-García (2008) stated:
A religious person may think, feel, and behave – personality traits by definition
imply some consistency across these three activities – in a somewhat different
way than a nonreligious person when facing stress and emotions (‘neuroticism’),
novelty (‘openness to experience’), challenges from the internal and external world
that ask for self-control, orderliness, and responsibility (‘conscientiousness’), when
Adolescents’ Social Development 395

s/he is invested in interpersonal relationships (‘agreeableness’), or is in contact


and functions with others in general and in groups (‘extraversion’). (p. 84)

Several dozen studies have investigated how religiousness, and its different
forms, is associated with broad personality traits. Using the framework of
the Five-Factor Model, a recent meta-analysis of studies with 71 samples
from 19 countries (total N = 21,715) showed that religiousness (but also
fundamentalism and spirituality) is common among people who tend to be
high in the dimensions of agreeableness and conscientiousness (Saroglou,
2010). These findings are consistent with those of dozens of other studies
using Eysenck’s model of personality, where religiousness has typically been
found to relate to low psychoticism (Francis, 2009; Lodi-Smith & Roberts,
2007). The studies included in the recent meta-analysis come mostly from
Western samples of Christian background, but a few existing studies in
other religious and cultural contexts suggest the generalizability of the
findings, at least among the three monotheistic religions and Buddhism.
Closed-minded (e.g., fundamentalism) versus open-minded (e.g., spiritu-
ality) orientations are characterized by, respectively, low and high openness
to experience. The other two personality dimensions, that is, extraversion
and neuroticism, are either unrelated to religiousness in general or related
to it only in very specific contexts (Saroglou, 2010).
Only three studies in that meta-analysis provided data on adolescents.
These studies were carried out in Australia (Heaven & Ciarrocchi, 2007),
Belgium (Duriez & Soenens, 2006), and Poland (Kosek, 1999). Interestingly,
the mean effect sizes of the religiosity–personality associations in these three
studies with adolescents parallel those found with young adults and adults
(see Table 17.1). In other words, adolescents who are religious tend to be
agreeable and conscientious, but not necessarily high or low on extraver-
sion or neuroticism. Moreover, they tend to be slightly low in openness to
experience. Several studies on adolescents, using the Eysenck’s model, sug-
gest similar personality tendencies toward prosociality, order, and respon-
sibility (i.e., low psychoticism) (Francis, 2009).
Moreover, three longitudinal studies provided information on the causal
direction suggesting that child and adolescent personality influences later
attitudes toward religion. Religiousness in late adolescence, adulthood, and
late adulthood was predicted by conscientiousness or low psychoticism,
measured when the participants were children or adolescents (Heaven &
Ciarrocchi, 2007; McCullough, Enders, Brion, & Jain, 2005; McCullough,
Tsang, & Brion, 2003; Wink, Ciciolla, Dillon, & Tracy, 2007). In addition,
adolescents who were open to experience tended to invest more in spirituality
396 Saroglou

Table 17.1.  Mean Effect Sizes (r) of the Personality Correlates of Religiousness

Age Group k (N) Extraver- Agreeable- Conscienti- Neuroti- Openness to


sion ness ousness cism Experience
Adolescents 3 (990) –.05 .22 .20 .01 –.13
Young 31 (9,433) .06 .17 .16 –.02 –.03
adults
Adults 8 (2,281) .12 .25 .14 –.01 –.09
Note: Results are taken from the meta-analysis by Saroglou (2010). k = number of studies. Mean
effects are bold when > .10.

in late adulthood (Wink et al., 2007). Of course, the other causal direction,
that is, influences of religiousness on adolescents’ personality, cannot be
excluded. However, the existing evidence is in favor of the idea that ado-
lescents who are agreeable and conscientious tend to embrace – look for or
maintain, depending on family’s religious socialization – ­ideologies, prac-
tices, and groups (religion) that correspond to these personality tendencies
by proclaiming and enforcing social harmony, quality in interpersonal rela-
tions, investment in life goals, personal order, and moral self-transcendence
in general (Saroglou, 2010).
Agreeableness and conscientiousness are often considered to be the
two “moral character” personality traits, since they imply social and per-
sonal responsibility (Cawley, Martin, & Johnson, 2000). These two broad
personality traits are often found to point to a higher order personality
dimension denoting stability and regulation. In contrast, openness to expe-
rience and extraversion – being more heavily “temperamental” factors – are
often found to constitute a higher order dimension denoting plasticity and
growth (Digman, 1997; Markon, Krueger, & Watson, 2005; but see Ashton,
Lee, Goldberg, & de Vries, 2009). Thus, adolescent religiousness does not
seem to necessarily reflect, or result from, personality dispositions for curi-
osity; experiential openness; alternative ways of thinking, feeling, and act-
ing (openness to experience); or gregariousness, playfulness, and energy
(extraversion).
There are a variety of possible trajectories in religiousness during ado-
lescence and early adulthood. However, some decrease in religious practice,
identification, and beliefs is a common trend in adolescent development
and emerging adulthood (Dillon, 2007; Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009).
Interestingly, this decrease seems to parallel, or better follow, the devel-
opmental changes of personality. Series of studies on the developmental
changes of personality attest that, during adolescence, the mean level of
Adolescents’ Social Development 397

agreeableness and conscientiousness decrease, whereas the mean level of


openness to experience increases (Roberts, Wood, & Caspi, 2008). It is very
likely that the biological, cognitive, relational, and social changes that are
concomitant to these personality changes lead to the questioning, doubting,
reconsideration, and decrease of religiousness in adolescence (see more in a
later section). Thus, the decrease of religiousness in adolescence may result
from the same adaptive functions of these personality changes, that is, to
distance oneself from what is known and familiar and to explore new and
challenging alternatives.

Values and Religiousness: In-Group Conservation but not


(Necessarily) Openness
Value hierarchies can be observed universally but differ across groups
depending, for instance, on culture, age, and gender, or across individ-
uals as a function of individual differences (Schwartz, 2007). Religiosity
of adults, but also adolescents and possibly children, may be more present
among people with specific value hierarchies – or, taking the other causal
direction, may have an influence on people’s value hierarchies. Interestingly,
both conceptually and empirically, religiosity is closer to values than to
basic personality traits (Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, & Knafo, 2002; Saroglou &
Muñoz-García, 2008).
Schwartz’s (1992) model has been the dominant model of values in the
last 20 years. This model includes 10 major values (more precisely, sets of
several lower level-specific values) organized under two bipolar, almost
orthogonal axes. The first axis opposes values denoting conservation (tradi-
tion, conformity, and security) against values denoting openness to change
(self-direction, stimulation, and partly hedonism). The second axis contrasts
self-transcendence (benevolence and universalism) to self-enhancement
(power, achievement, and partly hedonism).
Another meta-analysis clarified the mean effect sizes of the associations
between religiosity and value hierarchies using Scwhartz’s model of values
(Saroglou et al., 2004). This meta-analysis included 21 samples from studies
in 15 different countries (total N = 8,551). In that meta-analysis, no distinct
analyses were made by age group and there was no study on adolescents.
Nevertheless, the majority of the samples consisted of young students (from
18 to 30 years old). The results confirmed earlier theorization and findings
by Schwartz and Huismans (1995). Overall (see Table 17.2, first block), reli-
giousness primarily implies valuing conservation (in particular, tradition
and conformity) at the detriment of openness to change (self-direction,
398 Saroglou

Table 17.2.  Correlations between Religiousness and Values

TR CO SE PO AC ST HE SD UN BE
Saroglou et al.
(2004)
(k = 21, N = .45 .23 .07 –.09 –.11 –.26 –.30 –.24 –.09 .14
8,551)
ESS 2 (25
countries)
Adults .34 .16 .13 –.03 –.06 –.20 –.23 –.17 .03 .05
(41,318)
Adolescents .32 .15 .07 –.07 –.01 –.14 –.24 –.13 .04 –.04
(2,323)
ESS 3 (23
countries)
Adults .32 .16 .14 –.04 –.10 –.18 –.23 –.13 .03 .04
(38,042)
Adolescents .29 .14 .09 –.09 –.03 –.11 –.23 –.13 .03 –.03
(2,055)
Boseret (2009)
(N = 200 .28 .08 .03 –.03 –.08 .00 –.15 –.19 –.03 .02
children)
Note:  For Saroglou et al. (2004), the reported results are weighted mean effect sizes of the meta-anal-
ysis (young adults and adults). For ESS2, ESS3, and Boseret (2009), simple coefficient correlations are
reported. Adults = ≥ 19 yrs old; adolescents = 13–18 years old; children = 9–12 years old. Correlations
are bold when ≥ .10. TR = Tradition; CO = Conformity; SE = Security; PO = Power; AC = Achievement;
ST = Stimulation; HE = Hedonism; SD = Self-direction; UN = Universalism; BE = Benevolence.

hedonism, and stimulation). Additionally, religiosity implies valuing lim-


ited self-transcendence: benevolence toward in-group members, but not
universalism; that is, broad concern for the welfare of all people and the
world. Depending on the country’s context, the association between religi-
osity and security may shift from positive (in traditionally religious coun-
tries) to negative (when the State is against religion, as in the ex-communist
Eastern European countries; Roccas & Schwartz, 1997). The association
of religiosity with universalism may turn out to be negative in countries
with a dominant mono-religious tradition (e.g., Mediterranean countries
of Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Orthodox tradition; Saroglou et al., 2004).
In sum, general religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices imply valuing con-
servation and in-group care at the detriment of openness to personal and
societal change and hedonism in life.
Very specific open-minded forms of religiousness such as symbolic reli-
gious thinking, religious quest (being open to doubting or questioning one’s
Adolescents’ Social Development 399

own beliefs), and spirituality may still be concerned with valuing tradition
and demonstrating low consideration for hedonism. However, these forms
put the emphasis on the axis of self-transcendence (valuing both univer-
salism and benevolence) versus self-enhancement (not valuing power and
achievement) (Fontaine, Duriez, Luyten, Corveleyn, & Hutsebaut, 2005;
Saroglou, 2008, for review). Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether these
results are because of the specific religious forms under study or totally
attributable to deeper social cognitive structures denoting flexibility, which
in turn are translated, in the religious domain, into symbolic and relativistic
religious thinking.
In order to examine whether adolescents’ religiosity implies value hier-
archies that may or may not be similar to those held by young adults or
adults, I carried out, for the purposes of the present chapter, correlational
analyses on the data of the European Social Survey (ESS), Waves 2 and 3
(http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org). This data (as in 2008) comes from,
respectively, 25 and 23 countries (if combined, this makes 28 countries) and
includes a total of, respectively, 45,175 and 40,757 participants.1 Among
these participants, there are 2,323 adolescents (13 to 18-year-olds) in ESS2
and 2,055 adolescents (14 to 18-year-olds) in ESS 3. Values in the ESS are
measured through Schwartz’s (2003) 21-item Portrait Value Questionnaire
(also called Human Values Scale). I computed a global score of religious-
ness (Cronbach’s alphas were .81 in both waves) by averaging the scores
participants gave on three items measuring (1) personal religiousness
(“Regardless of whether you belong to a particular religion, how religious
would you say you are?”), (2) religious public practice (“Apart from special
occasions such as weddings and funerals, about how often do you attend
religious services?”), and (3) religious private practice (“Apart from when
you are at religious services, how often, if at all, do you pray?”).
The results from the correlational analyses are presented separately for
adolescents and adults (all the non-adolescent participants) in Table 17.2
(second and third blocks). They replicate the results of the 2004 meta-
analysis.2 Moreover, religious adolescents hold value hierarchies that are
similar to religious adults’ ones, and the similarity in many cases is also
reflected in the size of the effects. The only notable difference in effect size
seems to be the fact that the modest association between religiousness and
security among adults is even weaker in adolescents. Similarly, the negative
association between religiousness and stimulation also seems to be attenu-
ated when one shifts from adults to adolescents. These two differences may
be because of age and/or cohort. Religiosity of contemporary adolescents,
compared to older adults, expresses, to a lesser degree, strong conservatism
400 Saroglou

(security concerns) and discomfort with excitement and challenges in life


(stimulation). However, it still reflects, globally across countries, social con-
formity and attachment to tradition (tradition, conformity, and low self-
direction; in other terms, collectivist values) as well as anti-materialism and
discomfort with sensuous gratification (low hedonism).
The major trends of adolescents’ value hierarchies as a function of reli-
giosity can be observed in an even earlier age, that is, among children of
9 to 12 years old. In the possibly only, to my knowledge, (unpublished)
study on religion and Schwartz’s values among children, Boseret (2009)
distributed questionnaires on different aspects of beliefs and values to 200
Belgian children between the 4th and the 6th grades (mean age = 11.02,
SD = 0.9; 40% boys). Values were measured by adapting for children the
21 items of Schwartz’s (2003) Human Values Scale used for the European
Social Survey. Religiosity was measured through three items referring to
the importance of God in one’s life, frequency of individual prayer, and fre-
quency of prayer in the family (4-point scales; α = .72). As shown in Table
17.2 (last block), children’s religiosity was associated with high importance
attributed to tradition, and low importance attributed to hedonism and
self-direction.
There is thus some lifespan continuity from childhood to adulthood
through adolescence in that individual religiosity parallels the preference of
conservation values and the low consideration of values denoting autonomy
change and hedonism. Taking into account the relative stability of person-
ality throughout the lifespan, one can suspect the underlying personality
traits (agreeableness and conscientiousness, but not necessarily openness)
and corresponding values (conservation versus openness to change and
hedonism) to be partly responsible for the overall relative stability of reli-
giosity throughout the lifespan. Changes in religiosity (Hood et al., 2009),
as well as changes in personality (Roberts et al., 2008) and values (Bardi &
Goodwin, 2011), throughout the lifespan exist, but they are quantitatively
less considerable than stability.
Beyond stability, developmental changes in values exist and seem to
parallel changes of personality. More precisely, cross-sectional correla-
tions between age and values in 20 countries (data from the ESS) show that
hedonistic values (hedonism and stimulation) are of higher importance
among people of younger ages compared to people of older ages, whereas
the opposite is true for all three conservation values (Schwartz, 2007). Such
developmental trends again parallel those of religiosity, which is lower in
late adolescence and emerging adulthood but may increase in adulthood
(Dillon, 2007).
Adolescents’ Social Development 401

Identity Status and Religiousness: Engagement but not


(Necessarily) Exploration
In people’s lives, and possibly more importantly in adolescent development,
religion is often involved with identity processes and outcomes. Religion
is indeed concerned, among other things, with providing answers to, and
ways of dealing with, existential questions typically involved in personal
identity (who I am, where do I come from, what is the goal of my life, and
whether the world is meaningful). Having said this, it is more intriguing
to examine which kind of identity is facilitated within a religious context,
especially among adolescents.
Erikson (1968) distinguished between two key dimensions involved
in the adolescent identity crisis, that is, exploration and commitment.
Exploration involves testing out possible identity alternatives, whereas com-
mitment entails choosing and investing in a given identity. Crossing these
two dimensions, Marcia (1980) conceived four identity statuses: diffusion,
foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement. The identity status of diffusion
is characterized by a lack of both exploration and commitment. In foreclo-
sure, people have made identity commitments but have not gone through
a process of exploration. Moratorium is the process of identity exploration
and may or may not lead to commitments. Finally, individuals in identity
achievement have gone through a process of exploration and made identity
commitments. On the basis of existing evidence, a likely normative devel-
opmental process seems to be the transition from diffusion, as a starting
point, to achievement, as an end point, with foreclosure and moratorium
being somewhere in between, depending on many personal and situational
factors (Meeus, Iedema, Helsen, & Vollebergh, 1999).
For the purposes of this chapter, I carried out a search for published stud-
ies on religion and identity status through PsycINFO (as of August 2011).
In total, 19 published studies among adolescents and late adolescents were
identified, presenting results from 24 samples (see Table 17.3). The stud-
ies were carried out mostly in the United States and Belgium, but also in
Canada and Israel. Participants were mostly of mainstream Christian tradi-
tions (Protestantism and Catholicism), but there were also studies on Jewish
(Markstrom-Adams & Smith, 1996; Tzuriel, 1984), Muslim (Saroglou &
Galand, 2004), and Mormon adolescents (Markstrom-Adams, Hofstra, &
Dougher, 1994). The findings, beyond minor divergences, converge to dem-
onstrate a clear pattern of how religiousness in general, and specific religious
orientations in particular, are interconnected with identity status. General reli-
giousness and indicators of religious involvement and practice are positively
Table 17.3.  Studies on Religion and Identity Status in Adolescence and Late Adolescence

402
Study Sample (N) Country Rel. Dimensions Major Findings
Duriez, Smits, and Goossens (2008) Flemish (Catholic) adol. (724; Belgium R. Transcendence +Normative ident.
longitudinal) Symbolic R. style +Informational, -Diffuse/avoidant
Duriez and Soennes (2006) 1. Flemish late adol. (332) Belgium R. Transcendence +Normative (1)
2. Flemish middle adol. (323) Symbolic R. style +Infor., -Diff. (1, 2)
Duriez, Soenens, and Beyers (2004) Flemish (Catholic) l. adol. Belgium R. Transcendence +Normative ident.
(335) Symbolic R. style +Inform., -Diff.
Fulton (1997) White students in Christian United States Intrinsic R. +ACH, -DIFF
college (176) Extrinsic R. +MOR, DIFF, FOR
Quest R. +MOR
Hardy, Pratt, Pancer, Olsen, and Late adol. (418; longitudinal) Canada Religious change -DIFF, -MOR, +FOR (changes)
Lawford (2011)

Hunsberger, Pratt, and Pancer University (132) and high Canada R. commitment +FOR
(2001) school (937) students R. doubt +MOR, +DIFF
Managing doubt +ACH
Hutsebaut (1997) Students (539) Belgium Orthodoxy +FOR
Against religion +DIFF
Klaassen and McDonald (2002) Students in Christian Canada Quest R. +MOR, -DIFF
university(160)
Leak (2009) Students (228) United States R. commitment +ACH
Faith develop. +MOR
R. fundamental. -MOR
Lee, Miller, and Chang (2006) Christian Korean-American United States Intrinsic R. +ACH, +FOR., -MOR., -DIFF.
adol. (49)
Markstrom (1999) Afrian- (62) and European- United States R. practice No findings
(63) American adol.
Markstrom-Adams and Smith 1. Mormon & non-M. adol. United States Extrinsic R. +DIFF (1, 2)
(1996) (85) 2. Jewish adol. (102) Canada Indiscriminate R. +FOR (1), ACH (2)
Markstrom-Adams, Hofstra, and 1. Mormon adol. (36) United States Church attend. +FOR, -DIFF (1,2); +ACH(1),
Dougher (1994) 2. Christian adol. (47) -ACH(2)
McKinney and McKinney (1999) Students, mostly Christian (77) United States R. practice and -MOR, -DIFF
commitment
Padilla-Walker, McNamara Barry, Students (491), mostly United States Religiosity +FOR
Carroll, Madsen, and Nelson Christian and European-
(2008) American
Puffer, Pence, Graverson, Wolfe, Religious adol. (600) United States Religious doubt +MOR, +DIFF
Pate, & Clegg (2008) Quest R +ACH, +MOR
Intrinsic R. -MOR, -DIFF
Saroglou and Galand (2004) 1. Native late adol. (81) Belgium Religiosity (R) +ACH, +FOR (1,2,3), +MOR (1);
2. Muslim immigrant late adol. Spirituality (S) -DIFF (1,3)
(72)
3. Other immigrant l. adol.
(86)
Tzuriel (1984) Israeli students (1129) Israel Religiousness + Commitment and Purposefulness
Verhoeven and Hutsebaut (1995) Students (1,438) Belgium R. practice +FOR
Personal religion +ACH

403
Irreligion +DIFF

Note:  R. = religious; ACH = achievement; DIFF = diffusion; FOR = foreclosure; MOR = moratorium.
404 Saroglou

associated with commitment in identity; that is, positively with achievement


and/or foreclosure, and negatively with moratorium and/or diffusion. Finer
distinctions are obtained when focusing on specific religious dimensions.
Intrinsic religion or symbolic religious thinking predicts high achievement,
whereas extrinsic religiosity or orthodoxy predicts high foreclosure. People
high in moratorium tend to present many doubts about religion; they may
also be high in quest religiosity or high in faith development.
The general trend, consistent across studies, countries, and religious tra-
ditions, is that religion in adolescence and youth implies, or at least is asso-
ciated with, commitment but not necessarily exploration. Exploration in
personal identity seems to be typical of a quest-religious orientation or faith
development. Irreligiosity and religious doubts may also be characterized
by exploration, but they may also reflect the presence of a diffused identity
status.
Three studies in Belgium (Flanders) by Duriez and collaborators (see
also Table 17.3) used Berzonsky’s (1990) more recent model of three iden-
tity styles. This model distinguishes between informational, normative, and
diffuse/avoidant styles.
Information oriented individuals deal with identity issues by actively seeking out
and evaluating relevant information before making commitments. When con-
fronted with information that is dissonant with their self-conceptions, they will
revise these self-perceptions. Normative oriented individuals rely on the norms
and expectations of significant others (e.g., parents or authority figures) when
confronted with identity-relevant issues. They rigidly adhere to their existing
identity structure, into which they assimilate all identity-relevant information.
Diffuse/avoidant oriented individuals avoid personal issues and procrastinate
decisions until situational demands dictate their behavior, resulting in a frag-
mented identity structure. (Duriez et al., 2008, p. 1024)

Consistently across the three studies, being a believer – a dimension these


authors called Inclusion versus Exclusion of Transcendence  – implied a
normative identity style. Approaching the religious ideas in a symbolic
rather than literal way implied an informative identity style and low dif-
fuse/avoidant style.
Studies on religion and identity formation most often provide cross-
sectional data and focus on patterns of individual differences. They are
thus insufficient to inform us on the role of religion regarding the under-
lying processes and patterns of identity changes. Nevertheless, two recent
longitudinal studies among Belgian (Duriez et al., 2008) and Canadian
(Hardy et al., 2011) adolescents provide interesting initial evidence in favor
Adolescents’ Social Development 405

of bidirectional links between religion and identity formation. First, the


maintenance of, or an increase in, religious involvement (attendance to reli-
gious service) across late adolescence and emerging adulthood predicts an
increase in foreclosure and a decrease in diffusion and moratorium, that is,
commitment but no exploration (Hardy et al., 2011). (An increase of com-
mitment together with exploration, i.e., achievement, was present among
adolescents with community involvement but not religious involvement).
The opposite process also exists: once identity commitments are made, they
facilitate religious involvement (Hardy et al., 2011). In addition, identity
styles may or may not have real impact on being globally religious, but high
versus low exploration in identity later influences the way one approaches
religious ideas, symbolically versus literally, respectively (Duriez et al.,
2008).
In sum, religion, compared to irreligion, follows and contributes to com-
mitment in identity, often by adopting that which has been transmitted by
authority figures and parents. A foreclosed identity is clearly present in
traditional and orthodox religious environments. Irreligion is more often
present among adolescents with low commitment but possibly also among
those with high identity exploration. Only symbolic religious approaches
and quest-religious orientation seem to result from a process of actively
seeking, testing, and revising information during identity formation.

Collective Identities and Religiousness: Ethnic but not


(Necessarily) New and Transnational Identities
Beyond personal identity, children, adolescents, and adults deal with (re-)
elaboration of their collective, social identities. This includes ethnic (and
race) identity (Quintana & McKown, 2008), but also new (for those born
of immigration), multiple, and transnational identities (e.g., European or
citizen of the world). The focus of this section will be on the role of reli-
gion with regard to ethnic (for natives and immigrants), new/adoptive (for
immigrants, in the process of acculturation), and transnational identities of
adolescents and young adults.
As argued elsewhere (Saroglou & Cohen, in press), there are several
reasons to favor the hypothesis that religiosity should relate positively to
ethnic identity. The two share common collectivist needs and values, con-
cerns for self-enhancement and collective self-esteem, as well as the need
for self-transcendence. In addition, historically, religions and nations or
ethnic groups have incarnated entities that seem to meet, through symbols,
406 Saroglou

rituals, and ideas, the human search for unity, continuity, and even whole-
ness (Saroglou, 2006). Sociological work has even established a typology of
the relations between ethnicity and religion (see Kivisto, 2007). In few cases,
the two may be independent (e.g., American Indians, Romania). However,
in most cases, either (1) ethnicity reinforces religion (e.g., Serbian or Greek
Orthodox, Church of England), or (2) religion is a major foundation of eth-
nicity (e.g., Amish, Jews), or shapes, colors ethnicity (e.g., Irish, Italian, or
Polish Catholics).
Several studies suggest that adolescents’ and young adults’ religios-
ity positively relates to ethnic identity and pride, but not broader identi-
ties. As multi-country data from the European Values Study shows, young
Europeans (18–29 years old) who identify strongly with their religion
(Catholics and Protestants) exhibit a stronger national pride (Campiche,
1997), stronger feelings of belonging to their region and country, and
weaker feelings of belonging to Europe and the world, compared to their
nonreligious peers (Belot, 2005; Bréchon, 2003).
Other recent studies confirm the positive association between religios-
ity and ethnic (origin) identity among adolescents and young adults who
live in Western countries and belong to ethno-religious minorities and/or
are born of immigrants. However, these studies also show that religiosity
within these ethnic minorities is either unrelated or negatively related to
identification with the new, adoptive country and culture. This was found
to be the case in European countries (Belgium and/or the Netherlands) for
Jews (Saroglou & Hanique, 2006), Muslims of North African and Turkish
descent (Friedman & Saroglou, 2010; Güngör, Fleischmann, & Phalet, 2011;
Saroglou & Galand, 2004; Saroglou & Mathijsen, 2007; Verkuyten & Yildiz,
2007), and other (Christian) adolescents born of immigrants from differ-
ent countries (Friedman & Saroglou, 2010; Saroglou & Galand, 2004). The
same was the case in the United States with Asian-Americans and African
Americans (but not Latinos; Ghorpade, Lackritz, & Singh, 2006), and
Muslims from various countries (Sirin et al., 2008).
The relation of immigrants’ religiosity with only strong ethnic/origin
identity and, possibly, even weak identity with the new/adoptive culture
seems to be rather consistent across studies. Note, however, that most
often these studies include samples from ex-immigrant populations of low
or medium socioeconomic status. An exploratory study on adult expatri-
ates in Brussels, originating from other Western countries and working in
European institutions or having good jobs in companies, suggested that the
picture may be more complex, depending on the specific religious denom-
ination. Indeed, among Protestants from North European countries and
Adolescents’ Social Development 407

Christians from the United States, religiosity was related to high identifi-
cation with the host country, that is, Belgium, whereas the opposite was
the case with Orthodox Christians coming from the Balkan countries;
Catholics from other European countries were in the between (Rangel &
Saroglou, 2010).
Is such a pattern of results positive or negative for adolescent and youth
development? Some scholars have argued that religion’s role in the devel-
opment of a strong ethnic identity is part of positive youth development
since it allows for integration into a community, a sense of belonging, pride
that contributes to positive mental health, and the development of a sense
of responsibility, especially for ethnic minorities and immigrants (e.g.,
Juang & Syed, 2008; King & Roeser, 2009). This may be true, especially as
far as the mental health of immigrant and minority groups is concerned.
Religious institutions, beliefs, and practices, as well as individual religi-
osity of the members of these groups are reasonably considered, both in
sociological and psychological research, to positively contribute to several
aspects of mental health, integration to a community, and social support
(Cadge & Ecklund, 2007; Viladrich & Abraído-Lanza, 2009). Studies on
African Americans confirm this idea (e.g., Bierman, 2006; Ellison, Musick,
& Henderson, 2008).
Nevertheless, this is just part of a bigger picture. As the above men-
tioned studies in ethno-religious minorities suggest, strong identification
with the culture of origin among religious adolescents and young adults
born of immigrants does not seem to be paralleled by strong identifica-
tion with, and acculturation into, the new, adoptive country; the two may
even be in conflict. Thus, religiosity may contribute to adolescent immi-
grants’ integration into their ethno-religious community (which in turn is
beneficial when facing mental health risks and when needing a minimal
insertion into a local community), but not to the broader multiethnic and
multireligious national community (which supposedly contributes to opti-
mal well-being and full and deep acculturation). Given the importance of
developing a double positive identification with respect to both original
and adoptive cultures (i.e., the optimal acculturation strategy of “integra-
tion”), doubts may occur as to how helpful religion may be for immigrants’
full acculturation. This is what initial evidence suggests: religiosity pre-
dicts not only low identification with the adoptive country, but also low
acculturation attitudes and practices (Ghorpade et al., 2006; Saroglou &
Mathijsen, 2007). Moreover, there is some evidence that, under specific
contextual influences (e.g., perceived discrimination, large cultural dis-
tance), religiosity of early adolescents from an ethno-religious minority
408 Saroglou

predicts prejudice toward other ethno-religious and convictional groups


(Verkuyten & Thijs, 2010).
In the context of perceived discrimination and/or relations of conflict
between the majority and the minority, it may be that religiosity directly or
indirectly predicts low well-being among minority members. For instance,
rather than buffering, religiousness was found to exacerbate the deleteri-
ous effects of discrimination and acculturative stress on depressive symp-
toms among Mexican-Americans (Ellison, Finch, Ryan, & Salinas, 2009).
In another study on Belgian Muslim late adolescents and young adults born
of immigrants, religiosity was found to indirectly relate to decreased self-
esteem and increased depressive symptoms through perceived religious
intolerance from the majority and feelings of anger toward the majority
(Friedman & Saroglou, 2010).
Attachment to family and thus intergenerational transmission may be a
key mediator of the preferential relation between religion and ethnic/origin
identity rather than new, adoptive country identity and full acculturation.
Research shows that family plays an important role in transmitting values,
religion, and ethnic identities, especially among immigrants (Güngör et
al., 2011; Knafo, Daniel, Gabay, Zilber, & Shir, Chapter 16 in this volume);
and that family-related processes may be partially responsible for reli-
gious young people’s well-being (Sabatier, Mayer, Friedlmeier, Lubiewska,
& Trommsdorff, 2011) as well as heritage culture maintenance and weak
acculturative change (Güngör et al., 2011).
Finally, note that the synthesis of recent research focused on the role of
religion in collective identities for natives and immigrants. Interestingly,
in contrast to religiosity, spirituality of adolescents and young adults
implies high importance attributed to the value of universalism (Spain;
Saroglou & Muñoz-García, 2008) and strong identification as a citizen
of the world among adolescents of various cultural backgrounds: natives
of Christian tradition, Muslims and Christians born of immigrants, all
living in the same country (Belgium: Saroglou & Galand, 2004; Saroglou
& Mathijsen, 2007). These studies suggest that a shift from traditional,
in-group religiosity, to more open-to-the-world spirituality may be
responsible for, or at least reflect, a valorization of universalistic ideals.
However, prudence is needed. It may be that spiritual and religious ado-
lescents and young adults, particularly those born of immigrants, who
strongly identify with the citizen-of-the-world identity indeed point to a
faith that transcends ethnic and national barriers (e.g., Universal Church
for Christians, Ummah for Muslims, spiritual universe for non-atheists),
but not necessarily a faith that supports multiple collective identities,
Adolescents’ Social Development 409

multiculturalism, and a universe fully tolerant of all convictions (see


Saroglou & Galand, 2004).

Religious Doubt: Relational Insecurity but also Optimal


Social Development
Doubting religious beliefs, and religion per se, is a process that typically
emerges in adolescence (Hood et al., 2009). For instance, doubt may arise
regarding religious beliefs’ logical pertinence and relation to truth and
regarding religion’s social usefulness and moral quality. In psychology
of religion, there has been some ambivalence regarding religious doubt.
Initially, religious doubt was perceived to constitute a maturational pro-
cess inherent to religious faith. In the conceptualization of religious quest
as a specific reflective and mature religious orientation, valuing doubt is
an important component that coexists with self-criticism and openness to
the possibility of changing one’s own beliefs (Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis,
1993).
However, the empirical evidence suggests that, overall, religious doubt in
adolescence is more often a precursor to “losing” religion than to a matura-
tion of one’s faith (Hood et al., 2009). Religious doubts are not exclusively
focused on one or a few specific aspects of religion, but quickly become
numerous and lead to more global negative attitudes toward religion, thus
facilitating the decrease and abandon of religious practice, group identifica-
tion, and beliefs (Altemeyer, 2004).
In addition, as far as psychological well-being is concerned, religious
doubt is typically found to relate to psychological distress, anxiety, and
low quality parent–child relationships, particularly among adolescents and
young adults (Hunsberger, Pratt, & Pancer, 2002; Kézdy, Martos, Boland,
& Horváth-Szabó, 2011). The causal direction may be double-sided. On
one hand, adolescents who tend to be emotionally unstable and, in par-
ticular, insecure in their attachment to parents, may more easily fall into a
state of turmoil with regard to religion as a way to express their discomfort
and opposition to religious parents or to the environment of socialization
in general. On the other hand, distancing oneself from one’s parents and
their religion may create a source of conflict and contribute to emotional
instability and relational anxiety. In contrast with religious doubt, religious
continuity in adolescence is facilitated in the context of emotional stability
and positive quality relationships with one’s parents. In turn, religious con-
tinuity may contribute to and enhance emotional and relational stability
and positivity.
410 Saroglou

The argument that will be presented here is that, beyond its disadvantages
in terms of emotional instability and relational insecurity, religious doubt
may be a sign of, or contributor to, positive social development of adoles-
cents in many other respects. Integrating fragmented evidence from previ-
ous research and theory, Scardigno and Saroglou (2009b) hypothesized that
adolescent religious doubt points to many positive aspects of social devel-
opment: personality (in particular, openness to experience), self- and rela-
tional development (individuation-autonomy with respect to parents and
openness to peer influences), increased interest in sexuality (resulting in
some disinhibition), moral development (in particular, high sensitivity to
moral hypocrisy), and cognitive development (decreased magical thinking
and increased rational thinking).
Scardigno and Saroglou (2009b) integrated each of these factors into
the same study as correlates and predictors of adolescents’ religious
doubts. They administered questionnaires to 307 Belgian adolescents (12
to 20 years old; mean age = 15.37, SD = 1.75; boys = 44%) that measured
attachment to parents (Hazan & Shaver, 1987), individuation with respect
to parents (12 items from the Emotional Autonomy Scale; Schmitz &
Baer, 2001), peer influence (ad hoc measure of seven items), disinhibition
(i.e., the seeking of intense experiences in parties, social drinking, and
sex – a subscale of the Sensation Seeking Scale; Zuckerman, 1971), sen-
sitivity to moral hypocrisy (ad hoc measure of 11 items), magical think-
ing (subscale of the Disgust scale; Olatunji et al., 2007), abstract/rational
thinking (20 items from the R80 and R85 intelligence tests that focus on
logical results in resolving various kinds of problems), and openness to
experience (from the Big Five Inventory; John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991).
In addition, they investigated the intensity of religious doubt through a
measure of 11 items that, after an exploratory factor analysis, was found
to tap three interrelated but distinct types of doubt. These were (1) cog-
nitive doubts (religious beliefs do not seem to be true and logical), (2)
social doubts (religion seems to be outdated with respect to the needs
and challenges of contemporary society), and (3) moral doubts (human
suffering and injustice raise doubt in religion) (Scardigno & Saroglou,
2009a).
The results on the associations between religious doubts and the hypoth-
esized correlates are detailed in Table 17.4 (partial correlations control-
ling for gender and age did not change the results). With the exception of
peer influences, all other hypothesized factors turned out to be significant.
Religious doubts, most clearly the cognitive and social doubts, but occa-
sionally also the moral doubts, were more present among adolescents with
Adolescents’ Social Development 411

Table 17.4.  Types of Religious Doubt and Correlations with Aspects of Social
Development

Aspects of Social Development Cognitive Social Doubts Moral Doubts


Doubts
Relational factors
Insecure attachment (father) .11* .15** .07
Insecure attachment (mother) .07 .12* .11*
Self-development
Individuation .22*** .21*** .07
Peer influences –.07 .04 .04
Moral factors
Sensitivity to hypocrisy .20*** .24*** .11*
Biological changes-based factors
Disinhibition .24*** .20** .08
Cognitive factors
Intelligence (abstract) .20*** .11* .06
Magical thinking –.16** –.19*** –.08
Personality
Openness to experience .15** .15* .04
Note:  N = 307. Results are taken from Scardigno and Saroglou (2009b). Copyright © 2009 by Rosa
Scardigno and Vassilis Saroglou.
* p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

insecure attachment (to both father and mother), high openness to experi-
ence, need for individuation, sensitivity to moral hypocrisy, rational think-
ing, and, finally, low magical thinking. Distinct correlations by age group
(three age groups were created) suggest that factors related to cognitive
development (abstract thinking, low magical thinking), sexual develop-
ment (disinhibition), and self-development (individuation) play a role in
religious doubt from early adolescence (12–14 years old). From the age of
15–16 years, moral and personality factors (sensitivity to moral hypocrisy,
openness to experience) also start to play a role in religious doubt.
Given some possible overlap between these various constructs asso-
ciated with high religious doubt, a multiple regression analysis was also
conducted. As shown in Table 17.5, it turned out that many dimensions
involved in adolescent development uniquely and additively predict high
religious doubt. This was the case with moral (sensitivity to hypocrisy),
cognitive (low magical thinking), social-relational (individuation and inse-
cure attachment), and sexuality-based (disinhibition) factors.
It seems reasonable to conclude from the results of that study that typi-
cal processes inherent to adolescent social development are responsible for
412 Saroglou

Table 17.5.  Multiple Regression of Religious Doubt (Cognitive and Social) on


the Significant Predictors

b t-test
Insecure attachment (parents) .10 1.66†
Individuation .12 1.97*
Disinhibition .16 2.74**
Sensitivity to hypocrisy .17 3.10**
Magical thinking –.16 –2.86**
R2 = .15
Note:  N = 307. Results are taken from Scardigno and Saroglou (2009b). Copyright © 2009 by Rosa
Scardigno and Vassilis Saroglou.
* p < .05. ** p < .01. † p < .10.

religious doubt in adolescence. Abandoning magical thinking and develop-


ing rational, abstract thinking can call into question religious beliefs and
practices that may appear to be incompatible with truth and rationality (see
also Nybord, 2009). Openness to experience and disinhibition place the pri-
ority of attention and interests on sexuality, gender relations, dating, and
new, alternative, and sensation-seeking based experiences. Religion, with
which the above constructs may be in conflict, is thus put in the margin.
There is considerable evidence on religion’s effect in adolescence and youth
on inhibiting behaviors such as risk-taking activities, smoking, sexual behav-
ior (Cheung & Yeung, 2011), and even humor (Saroglou, 2002). Aversion
toward moral hypocrisy, alone or in combination with rational thinking, can
lead to criticism of religious hypocrisy, especially in reference to institutions
and important figures (see also Altemeyer, 2004). Finally, individuation can
lead to reflection on and distance-taking from everything that represents
the parental world, societal norms, and culture’s established traditions. From
this perspective, religion seems to be a susceptible target since it often repre-
sents an ancestral past and a component of the “establishment.”
Therefore, one can wonder whether it is not more reasonable, instead of
seeing adolescent religious doubt as a problem inducing potential risks for
optimal development, to consider it as being in line with the adaptive func-
tions of the many changes in adolescence. Integrating what was reviewed in
the previous sections, one cannot neglect the fact that biological and social
changes in adolescence result in personality, values, and identity changes
that have obvious adaptive functions for growth, exploration, plasticity, and
thus both personal and societal transformations. Distancing oneself from
religion may thus be natural in light of these adaptive functions, whereas
Adolescents’ Social Development 413

religious continuity without questioning may, from this perspective, be mal-


adaptive. Thus, in comparison to childhood, where it seems to be somehow
natural to hold (1) religious beliefs in counter-intuitive, mostly benevolent
but surely omnipotent agents, (2) wishful thinking transformed in prayer,
and (3) belief in intentionality and order in the world (Boyer, 2001; Keleman,
2004; Woolley & Phelps, 2001), religion in adolescence may be less natural.
Such a concluding argument may be seen to be in total contrast with
the idea that adolescence is a “sensitive” period for spiritual development
(Good & Willoughby, 2008). The authors define a sensitive period as “a span
of time that is optimal for developing a certain skill, capacity, or behavior”
(p. 32). They argue that normative developmental characteristics of ado-
lescence may make teenagers more responsive to spiritual overtures. These
characteristics are abstract thinking, metacognition, conversion and com-
mitment experiences based on strong emotions, and the need to cope with
adversity, as well as endurance of commitments throughout the lifespan. My
argument is not really in contrast with this, but importantly complements
it. First, Good and Willoughby (2008) maintain an ambiguity by using in
their review “spirituality” and “religiosity” interchangeably. No doubt, nor-
mative developmental changes may push adolescents to orient themselves,
through religious doubting, toward reflective and autonomous spirituality
and mature forms of religion and faith (Oser et al., 2006; Scarlett & Albert,
2010). The question  – at the center of the adaptive functions issue  – is
whether this process represents a major pathway or concerns a minority
of adolescents. Evidence is in favor of the idea that in adolescence, at least
in Western countries, religious doubting and apostasy is much more com-
mon than religious and spiritual conversions (Hood et al., 2009). Second,
no doubt, adolescence may be a more sensitive, more efficient period for
religious and spiritual conversions and commitments than later age peri-
ods; this may be interesting (in terms of applications) for those who value
religion and/or spirituality. However, the same is true for alternative forms
of worldviews and ideologies: adolescence, for reasons that are probably
similar to those as for spirituality and religiosity, may be a “sensitive period”
for agnosticism, irreligion, and atheism, too.

Conclusion: Positive or Negative Role of Religion?


The concluding argument of the present review will differ from conclu-
sions of recent review books and chapters on religious and spiritual devel-
opment in general or among adolescents in particular. In these reviews,
as mentioned earlier in the introduction, the conclusions focus on the
414 Saroglou

positive role of religion (and/or spirituality), although the authors also


acknowledge some negative aspects of religion. For instance, “involvement
with religion can promote many aspects of adolescent wellbeing and iden-
tity and enhance one’s sense of purpose and meaning in life and thus ser-
vice towards others” (Boyatzis, 2009, p. 61); and “increased understanding
will elucidate how spirituality may serve as a potentially potent aspect of
the developmental system, through which young people can gain a greater
understanding of themselves and their connections to the greater world in
ways that fosters a sense of responsibility and compassion to the greater
good” (King & Roeser, 2009, p. 471). More nuanced conclusions put the
emphasis on some forms of religion: “higher stages of positive religious
and spiritual development provide adaptive functions” (Oser et al., 2006,
p. 991; my italics).
In those reviews, the negative aspects of religion are not totally neglected,
but only briefly presented. Moreover, these aspects are located in negative
forms of institutional and/or individual religion, such as belonging to cults,
authoritarian religious groups, and terrorist organizations; having occultist
practices, being extrinsic in religious orientation, having negative images
of God, experiencing negative religious emotions, or having “pathological
spiritual development;” and they are diagnosed by their negative effects
especially in terms of prejudice, violence, and risks for mental disorder
(Holden & Vittrup, 2010; King & Roeser, 2009; Oser et al., 2006; Scarlett &
Albert, 2010; Wagener & Mlony, 2006).
I contest neither the positive role of religion (although some prudence is
needed in light of the fact that most research is based on correlational data and
paper-and-pencil measures) nor the negative effects of problematic religious
expressions. However, it seems somehow easy to locate the negative effects on
adolescents’ development in only problematic religious forms. Additionally,
it is easily acceptable that religious and spiritual expressions characterized
by flexibility, questioning, symbolic thinking, and maturity lead to positive
outcomes whereas authoritarian, dogmatic, or neurotic religious forms con-
tribute to negative outcomes. It may also be that the real cause is not “religion”
per se or its specific forms, but underlying social cognitive structures typical
of closed-mindedness or neuroticism-related dispositions and traits.
What, on the contrary, is at the heart of the argument in the present
chapter is that personal, general, common religiousness (positive attitudes
toward religion, common religious beliefs, investment, practice, and/or
identification) among adolescents sampled from the general population of
average religiosity reflect, or contribute to, limited positive outcomes in rela-
tion to social development. Moreover, it is the same underlying processes
Adolescents’ Social Development 415

that explain both the positivity and its limitations. As the research reviewed
in this chapter shows, adolescents’ religion overall reflects, results from, or
influences:
(1) stability in personality (in relation with the self and the others) but not
necessarily growth and plasticity;
(2) in-group social responsibility and conservation of social order instead
of individualism–hedonism in values but not necessarily universalistic
concerns and autonomy, thus openness to change;
(3) coherence, meaning, and goals that allow for a sense of engagement in
personal identity, but not necessarily exploration of the alternatives and
re-elaboration of this identity;
(4) attachment to the ethnic identity  – and thus the origin identity for
adolescents born of immigration – but not necessarily attachment and
acculturation to the new/adoptive culture, and endorsement of trans-
national, frontier-breaking identities; and
(5) relational security in attachment but low need for individuation and dis-
inhibition as well as a tendency for magical thinking and low abstract,
rational thinking.
In sum, adolescent religion seems to lead to or consolidate social stability
and personal coherence at the cognitive, moral, emotional, and social lev-
els, but somehow at the detriment of openness, autonomy, flexibility, crit-
ical thinking, and pluralism, all important for optimal development. This
concerns domains of major importance for adolescent social development
such as personality, values, personal and collective identities, attachment to
parents, individuation, sexuality, and cognition.
In a way, this double-sided role of religion in adolescence parallels what
research has shown regarding religion’s role in mental health and optimal
well-being in general. On the basis of studies among members of new reli-
gious movements, Buxant and Saroglou (2008) concluded that belonging to
these groups helps members feel good, since it provides structure and per-
sonal strength, especially in the context of previous vulnerability. However,
this is at the detriment of optimal development and well-being, which
include autonomy, flexibility, and critical thinking. Similarly, Gartner,
Larson, and Allen (1991), reviewing research on religion and mental health
in general, concluded that religion may be an efficient means to maintain
or restore control in situations implying under-control, but nevertheless
includes potential risks for over-control. Adolescent religiosity seems to
function in a similar way: it fosters coherence, but one may need to look to
other resources to enhance openness.
416 Saroglou

At least two issues seem to be key for future research. As mentioned ear-
lier, an emerging part of Westerners, certainly adults but also adolescents,
define themselves as no longer religious, but spiritual. The contrast between
religion and spirituality seems stronger among adolescents than adults
(Saroglou, 2003). To the extent that there is some shift from traditional reli-
gion to more autonomous and reflective forms of spirituality, it may be that
some of the conclusions of the present review need to be re-examined. For
instance, modern spirituality and symbolic forms of faith seem to be less
characterized by discomfort with novelty and concerns for conservation of
social order, family, and national security and instead reflects, more clearly
than religiosity, ethical concerns of interpersonal care and self-transcen-
dence (Fontaine et al., 2005; Saroglou & Muñoz-García, 2008).
Another important issue is how culture influences the religion’s role with
regard to adolescent social development (see, for instance, Bond, Lun, and
Li, Chapter 5 in this volume; and Trommsdorff, Chapter 1 in this volume).
Throughout different sections of the present chapter, the emphasis was
in showing how the major lines of existing research seem to apply across
various religious and cultural contexts. However, there is a tremendous
need for more nuanced approaches that allow for detecting cultural specif-
ics. Emerging research in psychology of religion and culture (Saroglou &
Cohen, in press, for review) as well as in psychology of human develop-
ment and culture (Bornstein, 2010, for review) confirms the importance
of a culturally sensitive perspective on our psychological understanding of
how religion works in people’s, including adolescents’, lives.

Notes

1. These countries are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany,
Hungary, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden,
Switzerland, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Ukraine (both waves), Czech
Republic, Greece, Iceland, Luxembourg, Turkey (2nd wave), Bulgaria, Cyprus, and
Russia (3rd wave).
2. When computing the average of the distinct-by-country correlations, the associations
of religiousness with benevolence and universalism (positive) as well as power and
achievement (negative) become slightly stronger (e.g., for ESS3, respectively, .09, .07,
-.08, and -.13). Note also that Schwartz (Chapter 4 in this volume) presents results
distinct by religious group.

References

Altemeyer, B. (2004). The decline of organized religion in Western civilization.


International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14, 77–89.
Adolescents’ Social Development 417

Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., Goldberg, L. R., & de Vries, R. E. (2009). Higher order factors of
personality: Do they exist? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13, 79–91.
Bardi, A., & Goodwin, R. (2011). The dual route to value change: Individual processes
and cultural moderators. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 271–287.
Batson, C. D., Schoenrade, P., & Ventis, W. L. (1993). Religion and the individual: A
social-psychological perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
Belot, C. (2005). Du local au mondial: Les espaces d’appartenance des jeunes Européens
[From the local to the world: Belonging spaces among young Europeans]. In O.
Galand & B. Roudet (Eds.), Les jeunes Européens et leurs valeurs [Young Europeans
and their values] (pp. 177–203). Paris: La Découverte.
Berzonsky, M. D. (1990). Self-construction over the life-span: A process perspective on
identity formation. Advances in Personal Construct Psychology, 1, 155–186.
Bierman, A. (2006). Does religion buffer the effects of discrimination on mental
health? Differing effects by race. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 45,
551–566.
Bornstein, M. H. (Ed.). (2010). Handbook of cultural developmental science. New York:
Psychology Press.
Boseret, L. (2009). Développement philosophique, spirituel et religieux: Impact du système
éducatif [Philosophical, spiritual and religious development: Impact of the edu-
cational system]. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Université catholique de Louvain,
Louvain-la-Neuve.
Boyatzis, C. J. (2009). Examining religious and spiritual development during childhood
and adolescence. In M. de Souza, L. J. Francis, J. O’Higgins-Norman, & D. G. Scott
(Eds.), International handbook of education for spirituality, care and wellbeing (pp.
51–68). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained. New York: Basic Books.
Bréchon, P. (2003). Integration into Catholicism and Protestantism in Europe: The
impact on moral and political values. In L. Halman & O. Riis (Eds.), Religion and
secularizing society: The Europeans’religion at the end of the 20th century (pp. 114–
161). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
Buxant, C., & Saroglou, V. (2008). Feeling good, but lacking autonomy: Closed-
mindedness on social and moral issues in new religious movements. Journal of
Religion and Health, 47, 17–31.
Cadge, W., & Ecklund, E. H. (2007). Immigration and religion. Annual Review of
Sociology, 33, 359–379.
Campiche, R. J. (Ed.). (1997). Cultures jeunes et religions en Europe [Youth cultures and
religions in Europe]. Paris: Cerf.
Cawley, M. J., III, Martin, J. E., & Johnson, J. A. (2000). A virtue approach to personality.
Personality and Individual Differences, 28, 997–1013.
Cheung, C. K., & Yeung, J. W. K. (2011). Meta-analysis of relationships between religi-
osity and constructive and destructive behaviors among adolescents. Children and
Youth Services Review, 33, 376–385.
Digman, J. M. (1997). Higher-order factors of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 73, 1246–1256.
Dillon, M. (2007). Age, generation, and cohort in American religion and spirituality. In
J. A. Beckford & N. J. Demerath, III (Eds.), The Sage handbook of the sociology of
religion (pp. 526–546). London: Sage.
418 Saroglou

Duriez, B., Smits, I., & Goossens, L. (2008). The relation between identity styles and reli-
giosity in adolescence: Evidence from a longitudinal perspective. Personality and
Individual Differences, 44, 1022–1031.
Duriez, B., & Soenens, B. (2006). Personality, identity styles, and religiosity: An inte-
grative study among late and middle adolescents. Journal of Adolescence, 29,
119–135.
Duriez, B., Soenens, B., & Beyers, W. (2004). Personality, identity styles, and religios-
ity: An integrative study among late adolescents in Flanders (Belgium). Journal of
Personality, 72, 877–908.
Ellison, C. G., Finch, B. K., Ryan, D. N., & Salinas, J. J. (2009). Religious involvement
and depressive symptoms among Mexican-origin adults in California. Journal of
Community Psychology, 37, 171–193.
Ellison, C. G., Musick, M. A., & Henderson, A. K. (2008). Balm in Gilead: Racism, reli-
gious involvement, and psychological distress among African American adults.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 47, 291–309.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. Oxford: Norton.
Flanagan, K., & Jupp, P. C. (Eds.). (2007). A sociology of spirituality. Burlington, VT:
Ashgate.
Fontaine, J. R. J., Duriez, B., Luyten, P., Corveleyn, J., & Hutsebaut, D. (2005).
Consequences of a multi-dimensional approach to religion for the relationship
between religiosity and value priorities. International Journal for the Psychology of
Religion, 15, 123–143.
Francis, L. J. (2009). Comparative empirical research in religion: Conceptual and operational
challenges within empirical theology. In L. J. Francis, M. Robbins, & J. Astley (Eds.),
Empirical theology in texts and tables (pp. 127–152). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
Friedman, M., & Saroglou, V. (2010). Religiosity, psychological acculturation to the host
culture, self-esteem and depressive symptoms among stigmatized and nonstig-
matized religious immigrant groups in Western Europe. Basic and Applied Social
Psychology, 32, 185–195.
Fulton, A. S. (1997). Identity status, religious orientation, and prejudice. Journal of Youth
and Adolescence, 26, 1–11.
Gartner, J., Larson, D. B., & Allen, G. D. (1991). Religious commitment and mental
health: A review of the empirical literature. Journal of Psychology and Theology,
19, 6–25.
Ghorpade, J., Lackritz, J. R., & Singh, G. (2006). Intrinsic religious orientation among
minorities in the United States: A research note. International Journal for the
Psychology of Religion, 16, 51–62.
Good, M., & Willoughby, T. (2008). Adolescence as a sensitive period for spiritual devel-
opment. Child Development Perspectives, 2, 32–37.
Güngör, D., Fleischmann, F., & Phalet, K. (2011). Religious identification, beliefs, and
practices among Turkish Belgian and Moroccan Belgian Muslims: Intergenerational
continuity and acculturative change. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42,
1356–1374.
Hardy, S. A., Pratt, M. W., Pancer, S. M., Olsen, J. A., & Lawford, H. L. (2011). Community
and religious involvement as contexts of identity change across late adolescence
and emerging adulthood. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 35,
125–135.
Adolescents’ Social Development 419

Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. R. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment pro-
cess. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 511–524.
Heaven, P. C. L., & Ciarrocchi, J. (2007). Personality and religious values among ado-
lescents: A three-wave longitudinal analysis. British Journal of Psychology, 98,
681–694.
Holden, G. W., & Vittrup, B. (2010). Religion. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of
cultural developmental science (pp. 279–295). New York: Psychology Press.
Hood, R. W., Jr., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2009). The psychology of religion: An empirical
approach (4th ed.). New York: Guilford.
Hunsberger, B., Pratt, M., & Pancer, S. M. (2001). Adolescent identity formation:
Religious exploration and commitment. Identity: An International Journal of Theory
and Research, 1, 365–386.
  (2002). A longitudinal study of religious doubts in high school and beyond:
Relationships, stability, and searching for answers. Journal for the Scientific Study
of Religion, 41, 255–266.
Hutsebaut, D. (1997). Identity statuses, ego-integration, God representation and reli-
gious cognitive styles. Journal of Empirical Theology, 10, 39–54.
John, O. P., Donahue, E. M., & Kentle, R. L. (1991). The Big Five Inventory: Versions 4a
and 54. Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Personality
and Social Research.
Juang, L., & Syed, L. M. (2008). Ethnic identity and spirituality. In R. M. Lerner, R. W.
Roeser, & E. Phelps (Eds.), Positive youth development and spirituality: From the-
ory to research (pp. 262–284). West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation
Press.
Kelemen, D. (2004). Are children ‘intuitive theists’? Psychological Science, 15, 295–301.
Kézdy, A., Martos, T., Boland, V., & Horváth-Szabó, K. (2011). Religious doubts and
mental health in adolescence and young adulthood: The association with religious
attitudes. Journal of Adolescence, 34, 39–47.
King, P. E., & Roeser, R. W. (2009). Religion and spirituality in adolescent development.
In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psychology (3rd ed.,
pp. 435–478). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Kivisto, P. (2007). Rethinking the relationship between ethnicity and religion. In J. A.
Beckford & N. J. Demerath, III (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of the sociology of reli-
gion (pp. 490–510). London: Sage.
Klaassen, D. W., & McDonald, M. J. (2002). Quest and identity development:
Re-examining pathways for existential search. International Journal for the
Psychology of Religion, 12, 189–200.
Kosek, R. B. (1999). Adaptation of the Big Five as a hermeneutic instrument for religious
constructs. Personality and Individual Differences, 27, 229–237.
Leak, G. K. (2009). An assessment of the relationship between identity development,
faith development, and religious commitment. Identity: An International Journal of
Theory and Research, 9, 201–218.
Lee, J., Miller, L., & Chang, E. S. (2006). Religious identity among Christian Korean-
American adolescents. Psychological Reports, 98, 43–56.
Lerner, R. M., Roeser, R. W., & Phelps, E. (Eds.). (2008). Positive youth development
and spirituality: From theory to research. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton
Foundation Press.
420 Saroglou

Lodi-Smith, J., & Roberts, B. W. (2007). Social investment and personality: A meta-anal-
ysis of the relationships of personality traits to investment in work, family, religion,
and volunteerism. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 68–86.
Marcia, J. E. (1980). Identity in adolescence. In J. Andelson (Ed.), Handbook of adoles-
cent psychology (pp. 159–187). New York: Wiley.
Markon, K. E., Krueger, R. F., & Watson, D. (2005). Delineating the structure of nor-
mal and abnormal personality: An integrative hierarchical approach. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 139–157.
Markstrom-Adams, C., Hofstra, G., & Dougher, K. (1994). The ego-virtue of fidelity:
A case for the study of religion and identity formation in adolescence. Journal of
Youth and Adolescence, 23, 453–469.
Markstrom-Adams, C., & Smith, M. (1996). Identity formation and religious orienta-
tion among high school students from the United States and Canada. Journal of
Adolescence, 19, 247–261.
Markstrom, C. A. (1999). Religious involvement and adolescent psychosocial develop-
ment. Journal of Adolescence, 22, 205–221.
McCullough, M. E., Enders, C. K., Brion, S. L., & Jain, A. R. (2005). The varieties of
religious development in adulthood: A longitudinal investigation of religion and
rational choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 78–89.
McCullough, M. E., Tsang, J. A., & Brion, S. (2003). Personality traits in adolescence
as predictors of religiousness in early adulthood: Findings from the Terman
Longitudinal Study. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 980–991.
McKinney, J. P., & McKinney, K. G. (1999). Prayer in the lives of late adolescents. Journal
of Adolescence, 22, 279–290.
Meeus, W., Iedema, J., Helsen, M., & Vollebergh, W. (1999). Patterns of adolescent iden-
tity development: Review of literature and longitudinal analysis. Developmental
Review, 19, 419–461.
Nyborg, H. (2009). The intelligence-religiosity nexus: A representative study of white
adolescent Americans. Intelligence, 37, 81–93.
Olatunji, B. O., Williams, N. L., Tolin, D. F., Sawchuck, C. N., Abramowitz, J. S., Lohr, J.
M., & Elwood, L. S. (2007). The disgust scale: Item analysis, factor structure, and
suggestions for refinement. Psychological Assessment, 19, 281–317.
Oser, F. K., Scarlett, W. G., & Bucher, A. (2006). Religious and spiritual development
throughout the lifespan. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child
psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development (6th ed., pp. 942–998).
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Padilla-Walker, L. M., McNamara Barry, C., Carroll, J. S., Madsen, S., & Nelson, L. J.
(2008). Looking on the bright side: The role of identity status and gender on posi-
tive orientations during emerging adulthood. Journal of Adolescence, 31, 451–467.
Puffer, K. A., Pence, K. G., Graverson, T. M., Wolfe, M., Pate, E., & Clegg, S. (2008).
Religious doubt and identity formation: Salient predictors of adolescent religious
doubt. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 36, 270–284.
Quintana, S. M., & McKown, C. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of race, racism, and the devel-
oping child. New York: Wiley.
Rangel, U., & Saroglou, V. (2010). Religiosity and acculturation among expatriates of
high socio-economic status: An exploratory study. Unpublished raw data.
Adolescents’ Social Development 421

Roberts, B. W., Wood, D., & Caspi, A. (2008). The development of personality traits in
adulthood. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of person-
ality: Theory and research (3rd ed., pp. 375–398). New York: Guilford.
Roccas, S., Sagiv, L., Schwartz, S. H., & Knafo, A. (2002). The Big Five personality factors
and personal values. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 789–801.
Roccas, S., & Schwartz, S. H. (1997). Church-state relations and the association of reli-
giosity with values: A study of Catholics in six countries. Cross-Cultural Research,
31, 356–375.
Roehlkepartain, E. C., King, P. E., Wagener, L., & Benson, P. L. (Eds.). (2006). The hand-
book of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Sabatier, C., Mayer, B., Friedlmeier, M., Lubiewska, K., & Trommsdorff, G. (2011).
Religiosity, family orientation, and life satisfaction of adolescents in four countries.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 1375–1393.
Saroglou, V. (2002). Religion and sense of humor: An a priori incompatibility? Theoretical
considerations from a psychological perspective. Humor: International Journal of
Humor Research, 15, 191–214.
  (2003). Spiritualité moderne: Un regard de psychologie de la religion [Modern spir-
ituality: A psychology of religion perspective]. Revue Théologique de Louvain, 34,
473–504.
  (2006). Quête d’unité: Spécificité religieuse d’une fonction non nécessairement
religieuse [Quest for unity: Religious specifics of a non-necessarily religious func-
tion]. Archives de Psychologie, 72, 161–181. English version retrieved from http://
www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/psyreli/documents/QuestForUnity.pdf
  (2008). Religion and psychology of values: “Universals” and changes. In E. Agazzi & F.
Minazzi (Eds.), Science and ethics: The axiological contexts of science (pp. 247–272).
Brussels: Peter Lang.
  (2010). Religiousness as a cultural adaptation of basic traits: A Five Factor Model per-
spective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 108–125.
  (2011). Believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging: The big four religious dimen-
sions and cultural variation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 1320–1340.
Saroglou, V., & Cohen, A. B. (in press). Cultural and cross-cultural psychology of reli-
gion. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion
and spirituality (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford.
Saroglou, V., Delpierre, V., & Dernelle, R. (2004). Values and religiosity: A meta-anal-
ysis of studies using Schwartz’s model. Personality and Individual Differences, 37,
721–734.
Saroglou, V., & Galand, P. (2004). Identities, values, and religion: A study among Muslim,
other immigrant, and native Belgian young adults after the 9/11 attacks. Identity:
An International Journal of Theory and Research, 4, 97–132.
Saroglou, V., & Hanique, B. (2006). Jewish identity, values, and religion in a globalized
world: A study of late adolescents. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and
Research, 6, 231–249.
Saroglou, V., & Mathijsen, F. (2007). Religion, multiple identities, and acculturation: A
study of Muslim immigrants in Belgium. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 29,
177–198.
422 Saroglou

Saroglou, V., & Muñoz-García, A. (2008). Individual differences in religion and spiritu-
ality: An issue of personality traits and/or values. Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion, 47, 83–101.
Saucier, G., & Skrzypińska, K. (2006). Spiritual but not religious? Evidence for two inde-
pendent dispositions. Journal of Personality, 74, 1257–1292.
Scardigno, R., & Saroglou, V. (2009a, April). Religious doubt in adolescence: Types of
doubts and the role of sensitivity to moral hypocrisy. Paper presented at the 7th
Annual Mid-Year Conference on Religion and Spirituality, Columbia, Maryland,
USA.
  (2009b, August). Religious doubts in adolescence: Integrating the many dimensions
of adolescents’ development. Paper presented at the International Association for
Psychology of Religion Conference, Vienna, Austria.
Scarlett, W. G., & Alberts, A. (2010). Religious and spiritual development across the
lifespan. In R. M. Lerner (Series Ed.), M. Lamb, & A. Freund (Vol. Eds.), The hand-
book of lifespan development: Vol. 2. Social and emotional development (pp. 631–
682). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Schmitz, M. F., & Baer, J. C. (2001). The vicissitudes of measurement: A confirma-
tory factor analysis of the Emotional Autonomy Scale. Child Development, 72,
207–219.
Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical
advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in exper-
imental social psychology (Vol. 25, pp.1–65). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
  (2003). A proposal for measuring value orientations across nations. In European
Social Study Questionnaire development report (Chapter 7). Retrieved from http://
www.europeansocialsurvey.org/
  (2007). Value orientations: Measurement, antecedents and consequences across
nations. In R. Jowell, C. Roberts, R. Fitzgerald, & G. Eva (Eds.), Measuring attitudes
cross-nationally: Lessons from the European Social Survey (pp. 169–204). London:
Sage.
Schwartz, S. H., & Huismans, S. (1995). Value priorities and religiosity in four western
religions. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58, 88–107.
Sirin, S. R., Bikmen, N., Mir, M., Fine, M., Zaal, M., & Katsiaficas, D. (2008). Exploring
dual identification among Muslim-American emerging adults: A mixed methods
study. Journal of Adolescence, 31, 259–279.
Tzuriel, D. (1984). Sex role typing and ego identity in Israeli, Oriental, and Western
adolescents. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 440–457.
Verhoeven, D., & Hutsebaut, D. (1995). Identity status and religiosity. Journal of
Empirical Theology, 8, 46–64.
Verkuyten, M., & Thijs, J. (2010). Religious group relations among Christian, Muslim and
nonreligious early adolescents in the Netherlands. The Journal of Early Adolescence,
30, 27–49.
Verkuyten, M., & Yildiz, A. A. (2007). National (dis)identification, and ethnic and reli-
gious identity: A study among Turkish-Dutch Muslims. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1448–1462.
Viladrich, A., & Abraído-Lanza, A. F. (2009). Religion and mental health among minor-
ities and immigrants in the U.S. In S. Loue & M. Sajatovic (Eds.), Determinants of
minority mental health and wellness (pp. 149–174). New York: Springer.
Adolescents’ Social Development 423

Wagener, L. M., & Malony, H. N. (2006). Spiritual and religious pathology in childhood
and adolescence. In E. C. Roehlkepartain, P. E. King, L. Wagener, & P. L. Benson
(Eds.), The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence (pp.
137–139). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Warren, A. E. A., Lerner, R. M., & Phelps, E. (Eds.). (2011). Thriving and spirituality
among youth: Research perspectives and future possibilities. New York: Wiley.
Wink, P., Ciciolla, L., Dillon, M., & Tracy, A. (2007). Religiousness, spiritual seeking,
and personality: Findings from a longitudinal study. Journal of Personality, 75,
1051–1070.
Woolley, J. D., & Phelps, K. E. (2001). The development of children’s beliefs about prayer.
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 1, 139–166.
Zinnbauer, B. J., & Pargament, K. I. (2005). Religiousness and spirituality. In R. F.
Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spiritual-
ity (pp. 21–42). New York: Guilford.
Zuckerman, M. (1971). Dimensions of sensation seeking. Journal of Consulting and
Clinical Psychology, 36, 45–52.
18 Hindu Religious Values and Their
Influence on Youths in India

Ramesh Chandra Mishra

Abstract
This chapter explores Hindu religious values and their influence on adoles-
cent development in India. The position adopted in the chapter is that peo-
ples’ values and beliefs are influenced by the respective religious features of
the groups embedded in the wider cultural context. Guided by this assump-
tion, the chapter describes the contextual features of youth development in
India, the values exemplified in traditional Hindu religious texts, and the
process of transmission of those values among adolescents. As an illustration
of the socialization process, empirical studies on children and adolescents
from traditional and modern schools are described. Some details of adoles-
cents’ daily activities are presented and their effects on the development of
adolescents’ values are analyzed. The evidence suggests that among Indian
youths, traditional collectivistic values coexist with modern individualis-
tic values, which are considered necessary for societal development in the
present-day world. It is argued that traditional Hindu values can be seen as
universally human values, and they can be meaningfully used for promoting
positive and healthy youth development in the Indian context. The chapter
contributes to the existing knowledge about youth development by its focus
on different types of schools that provide very different kind of socialization
experiences.

This chapter presents a brief account of Hindu religious values and their
influence on youths in India. The chapter is organized in three sections.
The first section describes the contextual features of youth development
in India, the traditional Hindu religious values, and the processes of their
transmission among youths using the Indian theoretical perspectives. The
next section presents some research studies carried out with children and

424
Hindu Religious Values and their Influence 425

adolescents of traditional and modern schools; it also describes a study that


analyzes daily activities of adolescents in traditional and modern schools
and examines their consequences for the development of values. The last
section contains concluding comments to argue that Hindu religious values
are basically human values, and they can be fruitfully utilized for healthy
youth development in India.

Cultural Background and Theoretical Perspectives


Adolescence in Cultural Context
In today’s world, India stands as the second most populous country in which
adolescents constitute about 22.8 percent of the total population (Registrar
General & Census Commissioner, India, 2001). Until a decade ago, the ado-
lescents of India did not draw the attention of researchers or policy plan-
ners. In the year 2000, the U.N. Agency Working Group on Population and
Development prepared a document, “Adolescents in India: A Profile,” which
suddenly drew people’s attention to adolescents. Standing at the thresh-
old of adulthood and “at risk” of physical, psychological, and social health
problems (e.g., HIV, stress, crime), this population needs opportunities to
develop necessary psychological and social competencies and skills.
In developmental psychology, adolescence is viewed as a period of
transition from the stage of childhood to adulthood. Adolescents have to
deal with several rapidly concurrent biological, hormonal, physical, and
behavioral changes in their lives. They also have to master several tasks for
functioning effectively in psycho-social domains. Hence, some research-
ers consider adolescence as a phase of life that has a biological beginning
and a social end (Sharma, 1996). The nature of adolescence is still a glob-
ally debated issue. Apart from the age range, which constitutes the period
of “adolescence,” people in different cultures also hold different notions
of adolescence. Brown, Larson, and Saraswathi (2002) have presented an
account of youths growing in eight different regions of the world. The pic-
ture of adolescents’ lives drawn in this volume is very different from the
accounts presented by Western psychologists. The evidence Brown et al.
(2002) present challenges the universal hypothesis that adolescence is a
period of “stress and storm.”
Socialization plays an important role in determining how the changes
taking place among adolescents are viewed and handled. Whereas the
diversity of youths’ experiences in different parts of the world is fairly well-
known (Verma & Saraswathi, 2002), there is also evidence for the emergence
426 Mishra

of a “world youth community,” which exhibits several commonalities such


as the style of dressing, habits of eating, preference for music and dance,
and so on. These commonalities do mold or enfold across cultures in ways
that help people ascribe specific meaning to them in each culture. Brown
and Larson (2002) argue that understanding adolescents requires a thor-
ough analysis of the historical and cultural contexts in which their lives are
nested.
In the Indian cultural context, the word “adolescent” is used less
commonly in day-to-day interactions and more at the level of program
development (Singh, 1997). In Srimadbhagavadgita (a traditional Indian
scripture), “kaumaarya” (puberty), “yauvan” (adulthood) and “jaraa” (old
age) are regarded as the periods of life associated with significantly distin-
guishable physical and psychological changes (Section 2, Verse 13). Because
kaumaarya marks the transition to a stage of life where children have to
accept responsibility for everything they do, the ancient texts prescribe very
specific duties and codes of conduct. These are deeply rooted in the peoples’
psyche and influence the cultural practices directed toward adolescents
(Verma & Saraswathi, 2002).
Research indicates that boys and girls undergo very different experi-
ences during adolescence in India. A girl child in India is considered to
have low status in the family and society, and is exposed to several discrim-
inatory practices (Anandalakshmi, 1994). This observation does not hold
true everywhere (Singh & Mishra, 1999); however, for girls, the beginning
of puberty means greater participation in household activities and restric-
tions on movement. Factors like urban or rural residence, tribal or non-
tribal setting, and religious group affiliation also characterize differences
in adolescence. For example, in rural settings, both boys and girls share
responsibilities and participate in adult activities at an early age. Boys help
parents in agricultural and other economic activities, whereas girls share
household activities (e.g., cleaning house, cooking, fetching water, child
care). In the tribal groups, economic pressures on the lives of boys and
girls are almost of the same level, which result in low enrollment and high
dropout of both genders from school during the primary years of education
(Mishra, 2008).
Despite these differences, some features are common to all adolescents
in India. For example, “traditionalism” and “family orientation” are fairly
strong in both rural and urban settings (Mishra, Mayer, Trommsdorff,
Albert, & Schwarz, 2005: Mishra & Tiwari, 1980). Parental involvement
in and behavioral control of children is high in both groups (S. Sinha,
2009; S. Sinha & Mishra, 2009). Emotional interdependence among family
Hindu Religious Values and their Influence 427

members, respect for and obedience to elders, care of the young, and sup-
port to the weak stand as cardinal values; they are considered as dharma
(sacred duties) of adolescents in the majority of Indian families.

Religion as a Context for Human Development


Religion represents an important component of the overall context within
which human development takes place (Dasen, 2003). An interesting fea-
ture of religion is its resistance to change in cultural contact situations
(Camilleri & Malewska-Peyre, 1997). Ethnographic accounts document
considerable differences in religious beliefs and practices across cultures,
but their consequences for human development still remain largely specu-
lative (Dasen, 2003).
Religion performs many functions in personal and social lives of indi-
viduals and groups. It influences the ways in which people see the world and
organize their lives (Nsamenang, 2002). That is how it becomes an impor-
tant source of values and beliefs. Osho (2006) points out that religious value
makes society a better place of living for human beings. In the Western
world, people who hold religious values and beliefs experience greater
happiness and positive affect than those who do not (Heaven et al, 2010).
Tripathi (2009) indicates religion as a major aspiration for the advancement
of values. Religion also dictates ethical and moral principles and codes of
conduct for individual as well as social living (Emmons, 2005). The quest of
all religions for the search of “truth” engages them with an “other worldly
reality” (D. Sinha, 1988) or power that is often labeled as “God.”
For many religious persons in India, God is the deepest experiential real-
ity that can be achieved intuitively through engagement in processes like
disengaged action, devotion, and meditation – not something to be under-
stood through the use of intellectual capacities. The lives and teachings of
the founders of all great religions present us with numerous examples of
value-based living to experience that reality.
The search for values is a common theme in all religious and philo-
sophical traditions. In the ancient inquiries, the focus was on the ultimate,
absolute, or terminal values. In the Greek tradition, Truth, Goodness, and
Beauty were recognized as the ultimate values. In India these values are
labeled as “satyam, shivam, sundaram,” all of which find an important place
in the Hindu system of thought. In the vedant philosophical tradition, sat,
chit, and anand (existence, consciousness, and bliss) are regarded as abso-
lute values; they represent the characteristic features of the universal Self,
called paramatman. In the Buddhist tradition, liberation from the bondage
of dukha (sorrow) is held as the terminal value.
428 Mishra

Whereas people do have faith in one religion or another, there are varia-
tions within every religious tradition. It is also evident that people’s values
and beliefs do not simply depend on the religious group they belong to;
the wider cultural context in which individuals negotiate their daily lives
and their experiences in other cultural contexts play important roles in the
organization of beliefs and values, including the understanding of their
meaning in a given culture. Hence, the understanding of religious values
and their influence on youths require analyses not only in the context of
traditional religion, but also in the context of the long history of people’s
contact with the members of other religious groups. For example, in India,
this could be the contact with Muslims or Christians who came from out-
side and ruled the country for centuries.
The effect of religion today is not confined to people’s attitudes, beliefs,
values, and practices; it is a critical factor governing political activities at the
global level. History tells us that during the last 2,000 years, the world has
witnessed almost 14,000 wars. Why should there be so many wars if people
were truly religious in the strict sense of the term? Intergroup conflicts and
episodes of violence currently evident in different parts of the world suggest
that religion is not simply a matter of individuals’ faith, and its practice is
also not restricted to the attainment of peace, happiness, positive states of
mind and other healthy conditions of human existence. Although religion
cannot be isolated from the overall sociocultural context, many believe that
religion provides people with an ideal kind of social frame to assess the
conditions of their lives relative to those of others (Nsamenang, 2002). R.C.
Tripathi (1988) has argued that religious values, if properly aligned with
individual and social development, can help people pursue their aspirations
and live a life filled with dignity and hope.

Hindu Religious Traditions and Values


As indicated earlier, religion is always contained in a set of beliefs and values
that people hold and practice in their lives. Some researchers (Saraswathi &
Ganapathy, 2002; Shweder, 2008) have discussed the dominant Hindu reli-
gious belief systems and the way they shape psychological dispositions and
behavior of Indians. However, a distinction between religious beliefs and
values needs to be maintained. Rakodi (2010) indicates that religious beliefs
may be considered as the cosmological lenses through which people make
sense of the world they live in, whereas religious values refer to the moral or
ethical principles that people use (or tend to use) for making crucial deci-
sions in their lives. These principles are derived from the religious tradition
to which one feels a sense of belonging.
Hindu Religious Values and their Influence 429

Hindu religion (also called Hinduism) refers to the faith systems of a group
of people who live mainly in India (about 900 million), but also now in many
other countries. Sanskrit or Hindi language has no word that can convey the
exact meaning of the word “religion” the way it is interpreted today. Its literal
translation is “dharma,” which broadly connotes a sense of “duty” (Prabhupad,
2006). This could be toward oneself, the family, the community, the nation, and
all of humanity. Thus, Hinduism is regarded as “a way of life,” not a compart-
mentalized belief system or religion like Christianity or Islam (Radhakrishnan
& Moore, 1957). In the long history of its evolution, Hinduism has developed
through several stages and taken several forms (Reat, 1990), which also pres-
ents great difficulty in accepting it as one particular religion.
The difficulty is further complicated by the coexistence of polytheistic
(faith in many gods and goddesses), monotheistic, and atheistic elements
in Hindu religion. However, the dominant Hindu belief system is that there
is just one God, the Supreme Being. Several gods and goddesses mentioned
in Hindu religious scriptures are only the diverse expressions of a single
Almighty God. The presence of many gods essentially provides people with
several ways to fulfill their psychological needs. The scholars of religious
studies find this idea a bit difficult to digest; for them Hindu religion is
extremely complex and not easily reconcilable, since one can make any-
thing out of this faith system.
Traditional scriptures regard nonviolence (in thought, speech and action)
as the highest religion for mankind (ahimsa paramo dharmah). According to
Mahabharat (an old religious scripture of the Hindus), “prbhavarthaya bhu-
tanam dharmapravachanm kritam, yah syat prabhava sanyuktah sa dharma
iti nishchayah” (Shantiparva, Chapter 109, Verse 10); that is, “preventing
violence against organisms is the main purpose and the chief characteristic
of dharma.” This value (of nonviolence), which distinguishes human beings
from animals, is reflected in many different ways, called the indicators of
dharma. The 10 salient indicators include: endurance or fortitude, forgive-
ness, self-control, non-theft (i.e., respect for other’s possessions), internal
and external purity (not causing harm to anyone physically or mentally),
restraint of sensuous desires, wisdom, learning-based knowledge, truth-
fulness, and absence of anger or patience (dhritih kshama damosteyam
shauchmindriya nigrahah, dheeh vidya satyamakrodho dashakam dharma
lakshanam). As elements of samanya dharma (general duties), they make
one’s life virtuous. In extraordinary situations, one is recommended to pur-
sue vishisht dharma (specific duties).
On the practical side, all Hindu systems of thought agree that there are
four main values to be acquired and brought to perfection in the course
430 Mishra

of one’s life. Two of them are artha (wealth) and kama (sensuality). They
signify material prosperity, good health, and long life, which are desired
by most Indians. As worldly values, these are considered legitimate as long
as they are kept in their places, their limits are recognized, and they are
not suppressive of other values. The third value, called dharma, includes all
roles and obligations that characterize individual and social duties as well as
ethical responsibilities. The fourth value is moksha (release from the cycle
of birth and rebirth), which is a supreme spiritual ideal, but not achievable
without proper experience and resolution of the former three values.
According to Hindu religious tradition, soul is eternal, immutable, and
everlasting (Srimadbhavadgita, Section, 2, Verse, 24). What we do in this
life determines the form the soul will take in each new life. This is known
as the law of karma (action), which simply means “as you sow, so shall you
reap.” Performing one’s duties in righteous ways constitutes good karma
(called dharma), whereas violating one’s duties constitutes bad karma
(called adharma). Thus, the doctrine of karma permits freedom in the
sense that it is under our control, and not determined by cosmic or envi-
ronmental forces. Shweder (2008) illustrates how this principle is used in
the explanation of sufferings in India.
There is further division of karma according to an individual’s stages
of life, which is contained in the concept of ashram (stations of life). One’s
duties are set by the stage of life in which (s)he has arrived at a particular
point of time. Conduct according to the prescribed roles or duties for each
stage of life is called “ashram dharma,” which is very close to the notion of
“stage-specific developmental tasks.” The four stages are: (1) brahmacha-
rya – the period of childhood and youth in which relevant knowledge and
life skills need to be acquired, (2) grihastha – the long period of a household
characterized by the acceptance of personal, familial, and social responsibil-
ities, (3) vaanaprastha – the period of disengagement from worldly affairs
through the practice of meditation and reflection, and (4) sanyaas  – the
period of complete renunciation of worldly things, self-control, and realiza-
tion of Brahman (the True Self). Successful passage through these stations
leads to fulfillment of life and attainment of liberation, the final destination
in the journey of human life. There is also a division of karma according
to time, place, and person. The same action (karma) cannot be desirable
all the time, at all places, and with all persons. Knowledge of these subtle
delicacies of karma can make all actions religious and life dedicated to the
pursuit of dharma.
Associated with the belief in “many lives” is the notion of sanchit karma
(accumulated deeds) from the previous lives. Just as some trees produce
Hindu Religious Values and their Influence 431

fruits after many years, so do many of our deeds. Some effects observed in
one’s present life might be the outcome of actions performed in the previ-
ous lives. Thus, the theory of karma largely serves as a guiding principle for
Hindus’ behavior.
This discussion indicates that Hinduism is neither a philosophical enter-
prise, nor a religion that provides individuals with opportunity for the out-
let of emotions, called the “religion instinct.” It is a meaningful science of
life and an art of practical living. It simply means the organization of life
according to certain principles that ensure well-being.

Transmission of Hindu Religious Values


The admission that Hinduism is a “way of life” does away with the distinc-
tion among personal, social, religious, ethical, and moral values. If the well-
being of “self ” and “others” is the prime goal of all academic discourse and
practical concerns about values, then all values may be labeled as “human
values.” In fact, the discussion of values revolves around “human beings,”
who themselves are not independent entities according to Hindu tradition.
They are part of a “textured” eco-cultural system (Berry, 1983), which is
shared by other individuals, human groups, and many creatures of nature.
Realization of the fact that everything in this universe is interconnected
and innervated by a common energy (called God) is the first step in being
religious, since it generates respect for all around us, be it human beings,
animals, plants, rivers, or mountains.
In the agrarian Hindu society, these values were informally transmitted
to children in the course of their development. Parents and others present in
the children’s environment served as models. Many rituals were organized
to signify respect for nature (e.g., trees, rivers, animals). They inscribed
in children’s minds the idea of humans’ “coexistence” with nature. Family
was the main institution of children’s education, except for a few privileged
ones who could go to traditional Sanskrit schools (Mishra & Vajpayee,
2008). During the 19th century, the British opened schools (called “mod-
ern schools”; Mishra, 1988), which introduced new syllabi, new methods of
education, and a new set of values into the Indian society.
Technological advancements and changing socioeconomic conditions in
India over the last decades have generated some threats to the continuity of
traditional values. Exposure to the larger world and life patterns of other
cultural groups, competitive demands of the consumer economy, and high
parental expectations from children have considerably changed Indian fam-
ily dynamics (Mishra & Sinha, 2010). Differential skills, abilities, values, and
coping styles required for effective functioning in the present context are
432 Mishra

stressful for adolescents and parents (Verma & Saraswathi, 2002). Having
grown up in fairly stable and tightly knit social groups (D. Sinha, 1988),
many parents find difficulty in dealing with the pressures of social and cul-
tural change. The suspected utility of traditional values for success in the
present scenario often puts them in states of conflict. Parents feel helpless
in presenting adolescents with a “successful” role model. Saraswathi and
Pai (1997) indicate that even highly modern parents exhibit a tendency of
falling back on traditions when they find adolescents violating traditionally
established social norms with respect to marriage, career choice, or general
living. A “swing back reaction” (Mishra, Sinha, & Berry, 1996) in the course
of social and cultural change is not a new phenomenon.
Despite these changes witnessed in many Indian families, several tra-
ditional values are still observed; in crisis situations, they function as a guide.
Indian adolescents still have a family to return to; this serves as a “cushion”
against many adversities during adolescents’ transition to adulthood.

Empirical Studies
We now turn to examine the relationship between religion, schooling, and
development in India by citing some empirical studies. As indicated earlier,
cosmology and religion form an important component of a child’s over-
all cultural context. Silberman (2005, p. 645) shows that religion has the
“…function as a lens through which reality is perceived and interpreted.”
Emmons (2005) believes that religion provides meaning to an individual’s
life. However, because of its focus on the sacred, this meaning system is very
different from other meaning systems (Silberman, 2005).
Considering religion as an important factor in human behavior, many
studies in other parts of the world have examined the relationship of reli-
giousness with personality characteristics of individuals (Emmons &
Paloutzian, 2003; Heaven & Ciarrochi, 2007), but the focus is mainly on
adults. Given that adolescents face a variety of other challenges (Smetana,
Campione-Barr, & Metzger, 2006), especially in developing countries, the
role of religious values in their psychological functioning needs serious
research.
In comprehending adolescent development studies, researchers have
relied mainly on data obtained from adolescents who attend Western- or
modern-type schools. These schools lay emphasis on “progressive” or “sec-
ular” values. In culturally plural societies, pursuit of these values as “ideals”
is considered essential for individual and social development. The common
assumption is that “religious values” are inimical to healthy human and
Hindu Religious Values and their Influence 433

social development, although some empirical studies also suggest that they
can promote social and emotional well-being (see Heaven et al., 2010).
India provides an interesting site for studying adolescents in traditional
schools (often called “religious schools”). These schools have existed for
centuries; even today they exist in large numbers in many old cities (e.g.,
Varanasi) as an alternative to modern schools. Mishra and Vajpayee (2008)
present a detailed account of Sanskrit schooling in India and its effects on
cognitive and social development of children. How the routines of life and
values nurtured in these schools influence adolescents’ development are not
much known.
Some research related to intergroup relations (Berry & Kalin, 1995)
indicates that respect for and confidence in one’s own cultural identity and
values generates respect and tolerance for other groups. However, it greatly
depends on how one defines confidence. If it is taken in the sense of “secu-
rity,” then respect and tolerance for other groups are the likely outcomes. If
it is defined in terms of “own group glorification,” the likely outcomes are
intolerance and prejudiced behavior for other groups.
Bano and Mishra (2005) examined the perception and evaluation of
Hindu and Muslim children (aged 3–12 years) in India. Using a Model
Identification Task and a Projective Prejudice Task they found that, irre-
spective of age, both Hindu and Muslim children generally preferred their
own group members and expressed a slightly negative attitude toward
other group members. They also evaluated their own group’s performance
positively and attributed negative outcomes to the out-group. In another
study with Hindu and Muslim adolescent girls (aged 14–20 years), Bano
and Mishra (2009) reported almost similar results, that is, positive rating
of own group model, negative rating of other group model, positive evalu-
ation of own group’s performance, attribution of negative outcomes to the
out-group, and greater in-group bias on the part of Muslim as compared to
Hindu girls.
Using the same tasks, Bano and Mishra (2006) compared children (3–12
years of age) within traditional Sanskrit schools (called pathshala), tra-
ditional Muslim schools (called madarsa) and modern schools with respect
to the awareness of their ethnic identity (i.e., Hindu and Muslim) and prej-
udice against other group members. Findings revealed no significant differ-
ence between traditional and modern school children with respect to the
awareness of their own and the other group. With respect to preference for
own and the other group, significant differences were noted between the
school groups in terms of children’s overall liking of other group members
(modern>traditional) and choice of own group members for interpersonal
434 Mishra

activities (traditional>modern). Hindu children, either of traditional or


modern school, did not show any significant evidence of in-group bias,
whereas Muslim children of modern schools displayed greater in-group
bias than those of the traditional schools.
In another study with the same three school groups, but this time with
adolescent boys and girls, Bano and Mishra (in press) examined their rela-
tional orientations toward each other. The findings indicated a stronger
“separation” orientation (i.e., positive evaluation of own culture and iden-
tity, and desire to keep away from participation in the life of the other cul-
tural group) among traditional Sanskrit than traditional Muslim school
pupils. These findings give the impression that Hindu adolescents attend-
ing Sanskrit schools maintain greater psychological distance from Muslim
adolescents than do traditional Muslim school adolescents from Hindus.
Gender difference in this respect was negligible.
These studies illustrate what may happen to children in different schools
in a multicultural society. The lack of significant correlation noted between
prejudice scores of mothers and their children (Bano & Mishra, 2006) sug-
gests that school may be a potential influence on children’s development,
at least in the social domain of functioning. Segregation of children from
those of other groups, as it happens in traditional schools, may generate
different beliefs, values, and dynamics of relationship when they grow up
as adolescents.

Adolescents in Traditional and Modern Schools at Varanasi


In the preceding section we have seen that Sanskrit schools are an impor-
tant source of transmission of Hindu religious values among pupils. In the
following pages, we will look at a study carried out with adolescent pupils
attending traditional Sanskrit (n = 125) and modern (n = 132) schools at
Varanasi. The ancient city at the bank of the holy river Ganges has witnessed
a continuous history of human population for the last 3,500 years. A strong
Hindu belief is that anyone graced to die in Varanasi attains liberation from
the cycle of birth and rebirth. The belief is so strongly shared that even
today several thousand old people stay in the city awaiting their death.
For centuries, Varanasi has been regarded as the “cultural capital of
India” (Kumar, 2000). Knowledge in fields like philosophy, yoga, music,
dance, and other art forms was developed and disseminated in commune-
like organizations, called “math” and “ashram.” Many of them also oper-
ated a Sanskrit school on their premises; these schools have played a major
role in preserving traditional Indian knowledge and culture (Mishra &
Vajpayee, 2008). Some educational traditions (e.g., oral tradition), which
Hindu Religious Values and their Influence 435

run the risk of extinction in modern times, are still preserved in Sanskrit
schools at Varanasi. During the last decades, several Hindi- and English-
medium schools have also come up in the city. The math, ashram, and
Sanskrit schools organize education for Hindu children in traditional ways,
whereas other schools promise education in ways that can link children to
the upcoming market economy.

Daily Activities and the Values of Adolescents


The specific influences Sanskrit schools provide on adolescent pupils are: (1)
regulation of life by prescribing highly fixed and timed routines, (2) practice
of moral values in daily life, (3) exposure to different sets of experiences, (4)
placing different demands on life, (5) encouraging different activities, and
(6) emphasizing different sets of values (Mishra & Vajpayee, 2008). Some
of these influences do not operate on adolescents in other schools, whereas
others operate in very different ways.
In this study, a home questionnaire (Dasen & Mishra, 2010) was used
to assess the level of affluence of pupils’ families, but no significant differ-
ence between the two school groups was found. Spot observations and
semi-structured interviews were focused on activities the pupils generally
engaged in. The religious beliefs were assessed with the help of a scale, which
contained five extrinsic (e.g., visiting temples) and five intrinsic (e.g., faith
in God) aspects of religion. Each participant also rated on a 5-point scale
the importance of values like altruism, helping, obedience, responsibility,
nurturance, tolerance, sharing, and compassion.
The percentage of the time Sanskrit and Hindi school pupils spent on
different activities was calculated. The main activities of Sanskrit school
pupils along with the percentage of the time spent on each were: bathing
in the Holy Ganges (20 percent), visiting temples (20 percent), morning
prayers (15 percent), evening prayers (10 percent), praying with meals (5
percent), religious activities (10 percent), studies (15 percent) and cleaning
of room or clothes (5 percent). Taken together, the Sanskrit school pupils
spent almost 80 percent of their active time (out of 16 hours) on activities,
which may be characterized either as religious or religion-related. Play and
other leisure-time activities did not form part of the life of Sanskrit school
adolescents.
Pupils of the Hindi school stood almost in sharp contrast to those of the
Sanskrit school. Main activities of Hindi school pupils and the percentage
of the time spent on each activity were: study and homework (30 percent),
watching television (25 percent), playing (20 percent), tutoring (10 ­percent),
visiting friends (5 percent), shopping (5 percent), and household activities
436 Mishra

(5 percent). These pupils were engaged in diverse activities (e.g., playing,


watching TV), and they also spent considerable time on study and home-
work, but religious activities were altogether absent from their life.
With respect to the importance of Hindu values, the analysis revealed
that, in comparison to Hindi school, pupils of the Sanskrit school generally
gave greater importance to all values, but significantly more so to obedi-
ence, responsibility, tolerance, sharing, and compassion.
Do these values have any effect on the day-to-day life of Sanskrit school
pupils? The observational data suggest some general and some specific
effects. The general effects include polite and highly respectful behavior
with teachers, elders, or visitors. The specific effects include maintenance
of cultural heritage (e.g., language, dressing) and less participation in social
and recreational activities (e.g., visiting friends, going to the cinema). These
features of Sanskrit school pupils give the impression that they are tra-
ditional, away from acculturative influences, cut off from the mainstream
society, and less susceptible to change.
Observational and interview data provide evidence for many behav-
ioral qualities to be more strongly placed among Sanskrit than Hindi
school adolescents. For example, these adolescents show great flexibility
between independent and interdependent modes of functioning accord-
ing to the demands of the situation. Commitment to ethical and moral
values in daily life, strong sense of cultural identity, non-selfish orienta-
tion, satisfaction with minimal resources, effort oriented philosophy of
life, happiness, optimism, and overall satisfaction are some distinctive
qualities that can distinguish Sanskrit school adolescents from those in
Hindi schools.
These observations suggest that culture-level generalizations about
adolescents’ behaviors are not appropriate. Hindu religious values do not
influence all adolescents in similar ways. The nature of schooling engages
adolescents in different sets of activities and emphasizes some values more
than others. These experiences can produce different hierarchies of values
or transform the relative importance of some values for adolescents. The
values Sanskrit school adolescents strongly endorsed characterize “human
values,” which are concerned with distribution of human welfare. Hindu
religious values thus cannot be blamed to be inimical to individual or social
development. Competition is not the only method of promoting human
and social development (Krishnamurti, 1998; Osho, 2005). In the absence of
appropriate resource structures in India, enhanced aspirations of individu-
als resulting from competition have led to corrupt practices that destroy the
spirit of development (J.B.P. Sinha, 1968).
Hindu Religious Values and their Influence 437

Evaluation of the influence of Hindu religious values on youth develop-


ment in India requires focus on factors that produce individual variations
within the same group. The variability displayed by the school effect in our
study warns against advancing group-level generalizations. In studies of
youth development in the “majority world” (Kagitcibasi, 1998), the effects
of type and quality of schooling need to be examined more seriously.
The model of development based on technological and economic
advancement of societies has been under attack for the last few decades.
It involves severe human and social costs and makes life occupied with
endless meaningless routines (R.C. Tripathi, 1988). Social scientists (e.g.,
Capra, 1982) have argued in favor of an ecological model that focuses on
the “capacity building” of individuals and societies so that they can orga-
nize their life around their own values and objectives. The values need to be
channeled for creating a society that is “meaningful” (Krishnamurti, 2001),
that is, a society that prevents youths from being thrown into conflict with
their own cultural traditions and utilizes the cultural strengths in harness-
ing their activities toward productive ends.

Concluding Comments
In spite of infinite variety and diversity present in people’s social and cul-
tural backgrounds in India, there is a common outlook based on human
values that constitutes the Indian psyche (Sinha, 1988). The relevance of
many traditional Hindu religious values in the present-day context is not
only questioned, but some of them are also viewed as obstacles to economic
development (Singh, 1975).
Before judging the utility of religious values, however, we need to know
more about the religious values that are strongly held by Indians today. We
also need to examine the extent to which they regulate people’s behavior
in diverse settings (e.g., personal life, family, workplace). Values inferred
on the basis of Hindu religious scriptures are not enough to appreciate
youth development in India. Although religious values do have potential to
shape the outlook of youths, paucity of empirical studies will not permit to
claim that the same has actually happened there. As D. Sinha (1988, p. 48)
points out, “There is always a gap between the expected or the ideal and the
actual. From the ancient texts and scriptures to contemporary attitudes and
behaviour of Indians is a big leap fraught with dangers of erroneous over-
generalizations.”
Some research (Mishra, 1994, D. Sinha & Tripathi, 1994) indicates
that among Indian youths, traditional collectivistic values may stay in a
438 Mishra

state of coexistence with modern individualist values. Such findings sug-


gest that Indian youths can deal with traditional and modern values at
the same time. Strong representation of religious values among the youths
of both Sanskrit and Hindi schools provides support for this contention.
In the multicultural context of India, values like tolerance, sharing, and
compassion are extremely important for promoting positive intergroup
relationships.
There is a need for serious research on both traditional religious and
progressive modern values by using samples from the diverse cultural and
social settings of India. The contexts in which religious values tend to work
toward destructive ends, instead of playing constructive roles, need to be
examined using innovative methods of study and analysis.
Inculcation of values among youths is an issue of national concern. The
youth who have fallen prey to drug abuse, crime, delinquency, violence, and
other social problems have become the main focus; prevention for those “at
risk” of these problems is a major challenge. In schools, colleges, and uni-
versities, “value studies” are now offered as small but compulsory courses
(Tripathi, 2009). We may hope that in the upcoming years, these efforts will
be intensive and widespread. We may also hope that value education pro-
grams will be carried out in real field settings with a focus on value-related
conflicts confronting youths in their day-to-day lives. Theory without a
sound empirical research base is blind. Hindu religious values derived from
traditional scriptures require serious research to discover their structural
and functional patterns across different population groups.

References

Anandalakshmi, S. (1994). The girl child and the family: An action research study. New
Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource Development.
Bano, S., & Mishra, R. C. (2005). Intergroup perception and evaluation among Hindu
and Muslim children. Psychological Studies, 50, 144–149.
  (2006). Effect of schooling on the development of social identity and prejudice in Hindu
and Muslim children. Indian Journal of Community Psychology, 2, 168–182.
  (2009). Social identity and inter-group perception of Hindu and Muslim adolescents.
Journal of Psychosocial Research, 4, 417–425.
  (in press). Relational orientations of Muslim and Hindu adolescents in traditional
and modern schools. In P. Singh, P. Bain, L. Chan-Hoong, G. Misra, & Y. Ohtsubo
(Eds.), Identity, multiculturalism and changing societies: Psychological, group and
cultural processes. Australia: MacMillan.
Berry, J. W. (1983). Textured contexts: Systems and situations in cross-cultural psychol-
ogy. In S. H. Irvine & J. W. Berry (Eds.), Human assessment and cultural factors (pp.
117–126). New York: Plenum.
Hindu Religious Values and their Influence 439

Berry, J. W., & Kalin, R. (1995). Multicultural and ethnic attitudes in Canada: An overview
of the 1991 national survey. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 27, 301–320.
Brown, B. B., & Larson, R. W. (2002). The kaleidoscope of adolescence: Experience of
the world’s youth at the beginning of the 21st century. In B.B. Brown, R.W. Larson,
& T. S. Saraswathi (Eds.), The world’s youth: Adolescence in eight regions of the globe
(pp. 1–20). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, B. B., Larson, R. W., & Saraswathi, T. S. (2002). The world’s youth: Adolescence in
eight regions of the globe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Camilleri, C, & Malewska-Peyre, H. (1997). Socialization and identity strategies. In J. W.
Berry, P. R. Dasen, & T. S. Saraswathi (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology,
Vol. 2 (pp. 41–68). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Capra, F. (1982). The turning point. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Dasen, P. R. (2003). Theoretical frameworks in cross-cultural developmental psychol-
ogy: An attempt at integration. In T. S. Saraswathi (Ed.), Cross-cultural perspectives
in human development (pp. 128–165). New Delhi: Sage.
Dasen, P. R., & Mishra, R. C. (2010). Development of geocentric spatial language and cog-
nition: An eco-cultural perspective. Oxford: Cambridge University Press.
Emmons, R. A. (2005). Striving for the sacred: Personal goals, life meaning, and religion.
Journal of Social Issues, 61, 731–745.
Emmons, R. A., & Paloutzian, R. F. (2003). The psychology of religion. Annual Review
of Psychology, 54, 377–402.
Heaven, P. C. L., & Ciarrochi, J. (2007). Personality and religious values among ado-
lescents: A three-wave longitudinal analysis. British Journal of Psychology, 98,
681–694.
Heaven, P. C. L., Ciarrochi, J., & Leeson, P. (2010). Parental style and religious values
among teenagers: A 3-year prospective analysis. The Journal of Genetic Psychology,
171, 93–99.
Kagitcibasi, C. (1998). Family, self and human development across cultures: Theory and
applications. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Krishnamurti, J. (1998). Education and the significance of life. Varanasi: Krishnamurti
Foundation India.
  (2001). The matter of culture. Chennai: Krishnamurti Foundation India.
Kumar, N. (2000). Lessons from schools: The history of education in Banaras. New Delhi:
Sage.
Mishra, R. C. (1988). Learning strategies among children in modern and traditional
schools. Indian Psychologist, 5, 21–26.
  (1994). Individualist–collectivist orientations across generations. In U. Kim, H. C.
Triandis, C. Kagitcibasi, S. Choi, & G. Yoon (Eds.), Individualism and collectivism:
Theory, method, and practice (pp. 225–238). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  (2008). Education of tribal children in India. In P. R. Dasen & A. Akkari (Eds.),
Educational theories and practices from the majority world (pp. 145–167). New
Delhi: Sage.
Mishra, R. C., Mayer, B., Trommsdorff, G., Albert, I., & Schwarz, B. (2005). The value of
children in urban and rural India: Cultural background and empirical findings (pp.
143–170). Berlin: Pabst.
Mishra, R. C., Sinha, D., & Berry, J. W. (1996). Ecology, acculturation and psychological
adaptation: A study of Adivasis in Bihar. New Delhi: Sage.
440 Mishra

Mishra, R. C., & Sinha, S. (2010). Intergenerational differences in values in rural and
urban settings of India. Asian Journal of Social Psychology (communicated).
Mishra, R. C., & Tiwari, B. B. (1980). Intergenerational attitudes: A psychological analy-
sis. Psychologia, 23, 160–166.
Mishra, R. C., & Vajpayee, A. (2008). Sanskrit schools in India. In P. R. Dasen & A.
Akkari (Eds.), Educational theories and practices from the majority world (pp. 245–
267). New Delhi: Sage.
Nsamenang, A. B. (2002). Adolescence in sub-Saharan Africa: An image constructed
from Africa’s triple inheritance. In B. B., Brown, R. W. Larson, & T. S. Saraswathi
(Eds.), The world’s youth: Adolescence in eight regions of the globe (pp. 61–104).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Osho (2005). Jeevan kya hai (What is life). Delhi: Hind Pocket Books.
  (2006). Krishna: The man and his philosophy. Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House.
Prabhupad, A. C. B. S. (2006). Dharma: The way of transcendence. Mumbai: The
Bhaktivedant Book Trust.
Radhakrishnan, S., & Moore, C. A. (1957). A source book in Indian Philosophy. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Reat, N. R. (1990). Origins of Indian psychology. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities
Press.
Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (2001). Census of India 2001.
Provisional population totals. Paper 1 of 2001, Series 1. New Delhi: Government
of India.
Rakodi, C. (2010). Lived religion: Religious values and beliefs in developing countries and
their implications for development thinking, policy and practice. Proceedings of the
Development Studies Association Conference, 5th November, London.
Saraswathi, T. S., & Ganapathy, H. (2002). Indian parents’ ethnotheories as reflections
of Hindu scheme of child and human development. In H. Keller, Y. H. Poortinga,
& A. Scholmerich (Eds.) Between culture and biology: Perspectives on ontogenetic
development (pp. 80–88). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saraswathi, T. S., & Pai, S. (1997). Socialisation in the Indian context. In D. Sinha & H. S.
R. Kao (Eds.), Asian perspectives in psychology (pp. 74–92). New Delhi: Sage.
Sharma, N. (1996). Identity of the adolescent girl. New Delhi: Discovery Publishing.
Shweder, R. A. (2008). The cultural psychology of suffering: The many meanings of
health in Orissa, India (and elsewhere). Ethos, 3, 60–77.
Silberman, I. (2005). Religion as a meaning system: Implications for the new millen-
nium. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 641–663.
Singh, A. K. (1975). Hindu culture and economic development in India. Indian Social
and Psychological Publication, 1, 89–108.
Singh, D. V., & Mishra, R. C. (1999). Parent–child interaction in rural and urban set-
tings. Social Science International, 15, 67–74.
Singh, S. (1997). Adolescent reproductive and sexual health needs in India. Paper pre-
sented at the Workshop on Youth Across Asia, Kathmandu, Nepal
Sinha, D. (1988). Basic Indian values and behavior dispositions in the context of national
development: An appraisal. In D. Sinha & H. S. R. Kao (Eds.), Social values and
development: Asian perspectives (pp. 31–55). New Delhi: Sage.
Sinha, D., & Tripathi, R. C. (1994). Individualism in a collectivist culture: A case of coex-
istence of opposites. In U. Kim, H. C. Triandis, C. Kagitcibasi, S. Choi, & G. Yoon
Hindu Religious Values and their Influence 441

(Eds.), Individualism and collectivism: Theory, method, and practice (pp. 123–136).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Sinha, J. B. P. (1968). The n-Ach and n-cooperation under limited/unlimited resource
condition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 4, 233–246.
Sinha, S. (2009). Gender differences in intergenerational relationships in the context of
socialization. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Banaras Hindu University.
Sinha, S., & Mishra, R. C. (2009). Role of value of children, parenting style and attach-
ment pattern in intergenerational relationship. In A. K. Tiwari (Ed.), Psychological
perspectives on social issues and human development (pp. 167–178). New Delhi:
Concept.
Smetana, J. G., Campione-Barr, N., & Metzger, A. (2006). Adolescent development in
interpersonal and societal contexts. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 255–284.
Tripathi, A. N. (2009). Human values. New Delhi: New Age International.
Tripathi, R. C. (1988). Aligning values to development in India. In D. Sinha & H. S. R.
Kao (Eds.), Social values and development: Asian perspectives (pp. 315–333). New
Delhi: Sage.
Verma, S., & Saraswathi, T. S. (2002). Adolescence in India: Street urchins or Silicon
Valley. In B. B. Brown, R. W. Larson, & T. S. Saraswathi (Eds.), The world’s youth:
Adolescence in eight regions of the globe (pp. 105–140). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Index

Acculturation 243, 405, 407–408, 415 compensation pathway 324–326


gap 319 correspondence pathway 323–324
Adjustment, social 4, See also Competence, research 316–318, 328–332
social safe haven 319, 321, 324, 329, 362
Adolescence 13, 17, 30, 166, 167 secure base 316, 329
adolescents 166, 290, 434 security 193–194, 323, 332
Chinese 227, 237, 241, 249, 352 earned (attachment) security 327, 328
religiosity of 22–24, 110, 341, 344, 351 surrogate 316, 324, 335
values of 102–105, 110, 242, 435 theory 193, 316–318, 332, 334
definition of 5, 272, 315, 342, 425, 426 transfer 316, 318–320, 321, 322, 332–333,
development of 71, 97, 104, 318, 322–328, 335
332–333, 426 transition 320
Age, new 325–326 Authoritarianism 16, 116, 133, 294, 328, 333,
Aggression 60, 141, 146, 201, 202, 245–247 414
Altruism 194, 275, 285–286, 293 Autonomy 54, 240, 260, 318, 329, 342, 410,
caring for others 285 See also Independence
Amae 329, 331
Anthropology 330 Behavior
Approaches, theoretical 19–24, 348 deviant 151, 157, 241
Armenia 370, 379–386 externalizing 146
Asia 179, 225, 330 interrnalizing 326
Attachment 315 prosocial 21, 28, 146, 150–157, 169, 194,
Adult Attachment Interview 327 198–199
affectional bonds 316 risk 54, 322
behavioral system 317, 329 Beings, supernatural 25
felt security 194, 317, 322 Belief See also Religion
figure 83, 317, 323–325 origin of 46, 47, 51
symbolic 323–325, 334 power of 50, 52, 59, 61
normative aspects of 316 religious 18, 21, 47, 51–52, 153, 293,
proximity maintenance 321 346–348
proximity seeking 316, 319 supernatural 219
relationship 83, 193–194, 316, 321 systems 18, 48, 67, 292, 428
religious development and 323 unbeliever 46, 58

443
444 Index

Biology 22 Differences
biological factors 22, 169, 412 age 399, 400, 411
evolution 21, 320 cross-cultural 97, 341, 349, 361
mammals 317, 329, 330 individual 83, 191, 322, 376
in attachment 318, 323, 427–428
Capacity building 437 regional 236–238
Change religious group 104, 105, 110, 380
economic reform 240 Distress regulation 316, 324, 326
environment 15, 54, 330
family 349, 360 Earthquake 228–230, See also Tsunami
historical 6, 16, 48, 213 East-Asians 69, 72–76, 85
self 66 Education 53, 240, 257, 258–259, 264–267,
social 6, 237, 238, 241, 297 431, 435, See also Future orientation
urbanization 165, 218, 236 academic achievement 146, 245–247, 262
China 235 higher 215, 225, 256–267
Coexistence 429, 431, 438 madarsa 433
Collectivism 12, 82 NEET (not in education, employment or
Competence, social 147, 152, 189, 196, 198, training) 212, 216, 220–224
247 pathshala 433
civic competence 188–192, 193–203 peace education programs 180
civic engagement 189–191, 196–202 system 262
Competition, attitudes towards 224–225 European Social Survey 10, 11, 101, 110, 392,
Connectedness, social 228, 242–249 399, 400
Conversion 320–327, 334–335, 413 European Values Study 10, 18, 406
Culture 5–8, 46, 48–50, 140–142, 217, 315 European-American 72–76, 343
cultural artifact 19 Exploration 194, 256, 317, 329, 401–405
cultural context 135–136, 191, 425–427
cultural differences 66–68, 74–76, 78, 211, Face 73–74, 78, 82, 85
328, 343, 351, 355, 361 Family 110–111, 265–267, 346–348
cultural dimensions 6, 360, 385 breadwinner-housewife model 274,
cultural fit 7, 61 284
cultural models 14, 260, 360 environment 153, 254, 259–260,
of agency 6, 8, 31 261–265
cultural norms 152, 332 ideologies 28, 344
cultural practices 189, 378, 426 orientation 341–345, 353–355, 356–362
cultural values 130, 191, 212, 235, 236, parent religiosity 153–154, 272, 382–383
242–248, 360–362 values 10, 353–356, 357, 359, 360–362
culture-sensitive approach 4, 14, 20 Fertility 278, 291
definition of 6 Filial piety 238
Freud, Sigmund 19
Development Future orientation 253, 254, 261–262, 271,
civic 188–190, 196–199 355, 361
developmental challenges 3, 166–167 career orientation 271
developmental outcomes 27–29, 341 domain specificity 262
developmental tasks 4, 24, 192, 290, 430 existential concerns 66
economic 352, 360, 426 future life domains 256
human 123, 133, 235, 239, 427–428 hopes and fears 256, 266
prosocial 168 marriage and family 256, 266
protective and risk factors in 328 three component model 255–256, 262–265
puberty 426, See also Adolescence 50, 54 behavioral component 256
sensitive period of 413 cognitive representation component 256
socioemotional 318 motivational component 255
Index 445

Germany 23, 57–60, 290–292, 293–294, 352 individual level orientation 357–360
Globalization 31, 164, 213 individualism 12, 415
Government Restriction Index 133 individualization thesis 10
Group orientation 242–249 individuation 298, 410, 412, 415
in-group glorification 433 Indonesia 49, 146, 148, 150–152, 351
Groups, religious 290, 380–382 Intelligence 410
Buddhism 78–79, 81–82, 220, 334, 350, 395 metacognitive skills 167, 174
Christianity 53, 78–79, 81–82, 217, 300, 322, Interdependence 14, 82, 211, 212, 220–223,
334, 375 248, 349
Christian societies 20, 346 Internal working models 192, 194, 317–318,
Protestantism 21, 81, 101, 104, 217, 274, 323, 324, 327
277, 295, 334, 345, 346, 350 Israel 60, 104, 253, 290, 331, 353, 370,
Roman Catholic 101, 104, 350 379–382
Confucianism 238–239, 248, 334, 350 Muslim women in Israel 253, 258–259
Eastern Orthodox 101, 104, 110 Muslims in Israel 253, 257
Hinduism 334, 350, 424, 432
ashram 430 Japan 211, 228–230, 329, 330
ahimsa 429 freeters 212, 214, 216, 224
kaumaarya 426 hikokomori 216, 221, 222
Islam 61, 101, 104, 110, 146, 150–152, 253,
256–259, 294, 300, 350, 375, 433 Life course transition 296–297
transition into adulthood 260 Life satisfaction 125, 131, 140, 292, 343, 357,
women in 258–259, 261 See also Well-being 22, 123
Judaism 101, 104, 110, 113, 260, 277, 278, religiosity and 128
298, 300, 302, 304, 334, 350, 375, 379, values and 129
382
Shintoism 218, 350 Macrolevel 5–6, 20
Taoism 240, 350 Majority world 437
Zen Buddhism 220 Marginalization 211, 220, 227
Methodologies
Human Development Index 20, 125, 132, cross-cultural comparison 292, 350,
133–140, 360–362 353
Human Development Report 133 cross-national study 126
cross-paradigm work 178
Identity 4, 405–409 culture-level generalizations 436
development 4, 342 culture-level relations 360–362
ethnic 405, 406, 407, 415 empirical estimation of the three
gender 282–284 component model 262–265
status 405 hierarchical linear modeling 134–136
Immigration 290, 294, 297–298, 407–408, 415 interaction effect 131, 136, 304–305, 360,
Independence 14, 106, 133, 211, 212, 222, 236, 383
242, 329 longitudinal 25, 149, 170, 189–190, 196, 272,
India 348, 353, 424, 434–435 295, 323, 345, 346, 356, 395, 404
dharma 427, 429–431 meta-analysis 325, 344, 392, 395, 397
indicators of 429 period effects 9
samanya 429 pile sort 282
vishisht 429 qualitative 170, 276, 286
Mahabharat 429 quantitative 276
Rigveda 47 self-reports 151, 243, 278
wisdom literature 429 social cognitive mapping 156
Individuality 236, 240, 242, 248–249 systematic anomalous case analysis 281
individual agency 5, 170 Microlevel 6
446 Index

Migration 165, 293, 294, 296, 297 intimate 292, 307


internal 236–238 parent–adolescent 149, 153, 154, 324
migrant children 238 parent–adult 152–154
migrant youth 15, 242, 244 parent–child 152–154, 193–194, 195,
Modernization 345, 348–349, 355, 199–201, 203
See also Change peers 149, 169–172, 178–179
pop culture 219–220 homophily 155
post-industrial economy 214 peer dynamics 179, 181
post-industrialization 221 peer group 164
Morality 27, 173–175, 194, 393–394 peer norms 179
guilt 48, 52, 328 peer processes 165, 176, 178, 180,
moral conduct 48, 55 181–182
moral development 27, 166, 169, 191 religion and 154–158
Mortality salience 78 romantic 290, 299–303, 324, 325
Motivation 46, 211, 220–227 sexual 295, 302–305
Religion 48, 52–53, 97, 123, 146, 152–154,
National Study of Youth and Religion 23, 272, 217–220, 271, 273, 275–276, 295,
276–278 326–328, 370, 373–379, 391, 393–394,
National Youth Survey 25 413–416, 427–428, See also Groups,
Needs religious 3
basic 214 apostasy 316, 320–322
human need for structure 139 as attachment 333–335
personal desires 66, 81, 125 coming of age rituals 218–219
Networks, social 156, See also Relationships definition of 18, 427
Normativity 29, 330, 333, 347, 357–359, 360 development of 24–27, 47–48, 315, 322
function of 21, 46, 52
Obligations and norms, social 66 God 46, 56, 81–82, 320–322
institutional restriction on religious practice
Paleolithic 49 132
Parenting 118, 152, 154, 240, 333 leavers 382–385
parental beliefs 260 no religion 101, 104, 350
primary caregiver 192, 193, 316 non-religious groups 382–385
styles 117, 378 priest 47, 49
Personality psychology of 125–126
five factors 392, 394 return of the sacred 18
openness 391, 399–400 separation orientation 434
religiousness and 394–397 shaman 47, 49–50, 52
Perspective social hostility towards 132
first person 66, 70, 81 social-religious engagement 128, 132, 133,
taking 70, 71, 168, 178 134–138, 140–142
third person 66, 70, 81, 82 Religiosity 29, 127–128, 147, 292–299,
Western 316 346–348, 356–362, 375, 382–385
Portrait Values Questionnaire 101, 104, 113, decline of 345–346
380 private 275
Processes, empathic 174 public 274–275
religious activities/behaviors 130, 140
Relatedness 260, 329, 342, religious affiliation 274, 292–299,
See also Interdependence 54 303–305
Relationships 188, 192, 194–199 religious awakening 320–322
adult pair-bonds 317, 320 religious doubt 409–413
friendship 155–156, 195–196 religious experiences 328
intergenerational 290, 293 religious fundamentalism 58
Index 447

religious reaffirmation 335 Tsunami 228, 229


religious scriptures 429, 437 Turkey 290, 293–294
religious similarities 434
tradition-oriented religiousness 128 Uniqueness 242–244, 245–247, 248–249
transmittion of 346–348 Universalism 97, 99, 371, 397, 408
Rokeach Value Survey 11 unity with the universe 66
Russia 290
Value co-construction 165, 177–182
Secularism 129–130, 132, 134–139 Value enactment 176–177, 179–180
secularization 131, 345 Value hierarchies (and religion) 399–400
thesis 18–19, 345–346 Value of children (VOC) 16, 349–355
Self emotional 353, 355, 359–360
awareness 66 utilitarian-normative 353, 355, 359, 360
development of 69–71 Value orientation 12–17, 170, 273, 344
construal 14, 211, 222 individual 16
esteem 78, 81, 146, 298 Value priorities 99, 105
independent 14, 211, 222 development of 105–107
interdependent 14, 211 relations to attitudes 110–113
possible selves 273 religiosity and 107–110
universal 427 Value structure 14, 101, 105
Shyness 241 emergence of 105
Socialization 25–27, 97, 318, 370, 425, motivational 105
See also Parenting 9–10 motivational continuum 100, 102
accuracy and acceptance 113–114, 115–116, Value systems 104, 167, 236, 249
118, 376 of parents (or intergenerational tensions)
Society 217, 235, 346–348 176, 378
employment system 218 Value transmission and acquisition 113–117,
modern 52–53 118, 431–432
multicultural communities 165 intergenerational continuity 370, 372–373,
South Korea 217–218 379–385
Spirituality 20, 76, 126, 127–128, 147, 393–394, process of 113
See also Relgion types of values 115
afterlife 53, 57, 60–61, 77, 79, 81, 84 Value work 167, 169, 173–177, 179, 180–181,
karma 430–431 See also Values, development of
sanchit 430 Value-heterogeneity 166–167, 171, 177
other wordly reality 427 Values 3, 8–12, 97, 123, 136–138, 211–213,
other world 47–52 220–223, 228–230, 238–242, 399–400
sect 56–57, 79 conservation 103–104, 108, 110, 118, 319,
spirit 47–48, 49–52 380, 400
spiritual awareness 66, 79–85 definition of 8–9, 98, 344
spiritual experience 20, 150 development of 113–117, 164, 166–167,
subjective 128 168–171
Stability 394–397 of initiative-taking 245
religious 316, 323–324 materialistic 169
Standards 66, 68, 72–73, 76, 78, 81–82, 84 measurement of 101–102
Support, social 343 modern 438
openness 100, 108, 118, 319
Theory of mind 48, 69–70 parent–child value congruence 372–373, 383
Traditionalism 99, 128, 133, 136–140, 141, 142, post-materialistic 133, 220, 227
165–166, 215, 238–244, 247–249, 360, religious 157, 319, 345, 424, 428–431
371, 426, 434–435 social justice 171
Transmission 291, 292–295, 298, 371 street 169
448 Index

ten basic types 99–101 Wundt, Wilhelm 11, 19, 47


traditional 212, 249, 431–432
Chinese 242 Youth 46, 136–138, 140–142, 171–172,
Völkerpsychologie 11, 19 211–213, 424, See also
adolescents
Welfare state 325, 346 agency 180
Well-being 21–22, 128, 356, 409 programs 169–172, 180–181
West Java 147, 148–149, 158 religion and 17–29
Withdrawal, social 202 religiosity 274
World Values Survey 10, 124, 128, 129, 132, values and 8–17, 228–230
138, 142, 148, 360 volunteerism 228–230

~StormRG~

You might also like